


Diamonds in the Rough

by comatosecombat



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Battle of Five Armies Fix-It, Character Study, Drama & Romance, Dwarf Culture & Customs, F/F, Gold Sickness, Mythology - Freeform, Thorin Is Durin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-14
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-26 10:28:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5001229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/comatosecombat/pseuds/comatosecombat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bilbo is more or less enjoying her quiet life as a self-imposed spinster, until one day a wizard’s fancy throws her in the path of Thorin Oakenshield, a future queen on a mission to reclaim her homeland. Along the journey, as she learns more about the ways of dwarves, Bilbo is forced to reconsider her own narrow views on womanhood, as well as deal with her growing infatuation with their Company’s leader (who might or might not be the long-prophesied last incarnating of Durin the Deathless).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

Looking back on her life, Bilbo could easily say that she had inherited many of her characteristics from her mother. Belladonna had been as brave as she was able and – during her younger days - quite the adventurer, as it could be gathered from her many tales. Still, eventually even she had settled down and became Mrs. Bungo Baggins, marrying the most decent hobbit there was.

Conveniently, many women from the Took family married late in their life, as even Belladonna had, giving Bilbo socially approved excuse for her single living. Still, she was nearly forty now, and try as she might, no excuse, no matter how related to family customs it happened to be, could change the fact that she was well past her prime when it came to husband-hunting. Neighbors and matrons alike were always asking if she _“ever felt alone in that giant house of hers”_ or spend her nights _“longing to hear the soft padding of little feet across the halls”._

The truth was, that Bilbo quite enjoyed having the space all to herself, and the only sort of tiptoeing that kept her awake at night came from mice. But when she had tried to explain this to those she considered her closest friends, even they had looked at her with something akin to pity in their eyes. She soon learned to keep her thoughts to herself.

Had she been born a man, the quality of her life would most likely be a topic of concern for a much lesser group. The Shire had a couple of well-known bachelors, but as far as Bilbo knew, they could spend their days of singlehood unbothered; it seemed that the freedom to enjoy solitude was a luxury reserved only for the men.

Maybe it was her annoyance over the matter that had slowly transformed into mild rebellion. No one in their right mind would have dared to speak ill of her, but some went as far as saying that she _did_ have some rather peculiar habits. That is, peculiar - for a woman.

Firstly, there was her appearance to consider. She wore skirts that were too short - knee-length was, after all, deemed suitable for small children only – and sometimes, when she was doing something messy like puttering around in her garden, put on her father’s old trousers and braces. Like her late parents, she wasn’t all that immune to vanity, as she kept her hair nice and short, liking the way it suited her features that were – at least by hobbit standards – a little on the delicate side, and how it made her stand out from the group of her long-curled friends.

Secondly, she took a keen interest in literature. Your average hobbit could read and write just well enough to handle a grocery list, but in their elderly days some familiarized themselves in the letters and books, educating those from the younger generation who had the patience for it (as it happens, not very many did). She could hardly call herself a scholar, but she knew for a fact that her handwriting was superior to many. Again, this quality in character that would have brought pride to any man was an oddity for a woman to possess. “When you’re a mother, you don’t have time for books,” a friend of hers told Bilbo, rocking a nearby placed cradle with one foot, while balancing another child on her other knee. “And honestly, I don’t think men care for a girl who’s smarter than them. We all are, mind you, but when you have actual evidence to prove it, it becomes a lot harder for them to pretend otherwise.”

Thirdly, she smoked. Many hobbits grew their own pipe-weed, and during gatherings they got into heated arguments about the quality of leaf and who could produce the best smoke-rings. After the noticeable event when she bested all the men by making seventeen rings with one lungful, Bilbo felt like she wasn’t all that welcome into their company anymore.

All in all, it wasn’t quite the peaceful life she might have hoped for. Nevertheless, it gave her a good excuse for the restlessness that nested in her heart, which she felt flickering like a small flame whenever she waded through the shallow streams of Eastfarthing, imagining how they turned into deep and frozen rivers someplace far-away from there.

 

* * *

 

It was the morning after the wedding of one of her many cousins. Weddings, as merry as they generally were, had the distinguish tendency to make Bilbo feel especially anxious, mainly because of the level of awareness they managed to rise about her marital status - or more like, the complete lack of it. By now, Bilbo was convinced that the reason she had so effortlessly caught the bouquet in the last four weddings was that in truth, it hadn’t been a coincidence at all.

Last night her cousin had actually made a teary-eyed confession of how guilty she felt about celebrating her own happiness, given that her favorite relative was yet to find hers. It had required every ounce of self-control Bilbo possessed not say something far less polite in return. Instead, she had merely gone and drank some more ale, which interestingly resulted in her waking up in one of her rarely used pantries, using a bundle of spring onions as a pillow.

When she finally felt well enough to step outside for a smoke, she sat in her garden and wished for a magical solution that could save her from this wretched fate, as well as from a severe case of self-inflicted headache.

Naturally, that was the moment when Gandalf happened to walk by.

 

* * *

 

 There was a bearded lady in Bilbo’s kitchen.

As if the beard itself wasn’t enough, then there was the hair to consider– or more so, the lack of it. On the woman’s crown area a wild tuft of black curls stood up at like a grizzly mane, eventually settling into a thick braid that rested between the two axes tucked against her back. Each side of her head was completely bald and tattooed in the same manner as her hands, her ears covered in collection of silvery rings.

All in all, it gave the weirdest impression of how the missing hair from her temples had somehow managed to migrate on her stern jaw. The image was so hysterical that if Bilbo hadn’t been in the state of absolute mortification, she might have laughed out loud. As it happens, she had spent the time after the dwarf’s arrival sitting quietly in the corner and watching her eat, while mentally going through the contents of her kitchen and their possible uses as weapons in case her visitor suddenly decided the dinner wasn’t to her liking after all.

Still, a small sound that could have been a hiccup, or maybe a whimper, escaped her. The dwarf – without making any attempt to actually stop eating the food at hand – merely glanced in her direction.

Thinking that it was an opening as good as any, Bilbo cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, but who did you say you were again?”

“Dwalin, daughter of Fundin, at your service.” Suddenly, a loud a knock could be heard from the door. “Shouldn’t you be answering that?” she asked.

In a daze, Bilbo wandered to open the door. She had half in mind to ask the coming visitor if they, too, were able to see the lady with the beard in her kitchen, or had those older matrons been right all along saying how smoking too much pipe-weed was ill-advised for those with wild imagination.

Only when she opened the door, it wasn’t one of her neighbors who had come knocking, but yet another dwarf.

“Balin,” he squawked good-naturedly. His tunic was the same color as the poppies growing by Bilbo’s gate, and with his ruddy cheeks and nose he quite reminded her of her late uncle who had been famously fond of the local brewage. “At your service. I believe you have already met my sister?”

Naturally, one of her neighbors down the hill chose that moment to walk past. Bilbo suddenly became very aware that there she was, standing in the doorway with a strange man from even stranger race, wearing nothing but her mother’s nightgown and an old dinner jacket that had in turn belonged to her father, now worn-out nearly beyond repair.

Bilbo had no choice but to pull Balin quickly inside by his labels, while using her free hand to wave greetings in a way she hoped was cheerful and not borderline hysteric.

Unsurprisingly, the neighbor in question didn’t seem very impressed by the charade. Before she closed the door, Bilbo could see the woman picking up her pace as she no doubt made her way to the Green Dragon to inform everybody who cared to listen about the scandalous affairs that took place in Bag End at that very moment; that Bilbo Baggins, in her nighty, was entertaining strange guests of the gentlemen variety.

She let out a miserable sigh. From hermit to harlot in one blink - even by her standards, that was quite the achievement.

Half an hour later, Bilbo almost felt sorry for the town gossips, given that none of them were there to witness the arrival of the princesses.

When Bilbo opened the door for the third time, she was greeted with a pair of dazzling smiles. Like day and night they were, the other fair and the other dark, but the family resemblance was clear.

Also – more ladies with facial hair.

“Fíli,” said the blonde. Her hair was a collection of all sorts of braids with metallic clasps at each end, and her angular jaw was lined with golden sideburns, both ending in braids as well. With her furs and her sharp nose, she reminded Bilbo of a clever fox.

“Kíli,” informed the other one. To her relief, Bilbo discovered that she only had a pair of very bushy brows over almond eyes lined with thick, dark lashes, and a fountain of chestnut hair.

“In your –“

“- service. Yes, I know, although for a bunch that keeps saying that, I seem to be doing all the serving here,” Bilbo crumbled. By now, she had moved on from being intimidated to being massively infuriated. She wasn’t the most patient of hobbits on a good day, and this definitely, _definitely_ wasn’t a good one.

Still, she had no choice but to let the dwarves in. She figured that this way, her garden would at least survive the pillage.

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t until near midnight when Thorin chose to arrive.

There was something in her appearance that the locals might have called haughty, with her sharp nose and heavy-lidded eyes, their color like the depths of those frozen rivers Bilbo had so longed to see during her wanderings. Much like Fíli, she had a pair of sideburns lining her pale face, this time dark in nature, to match her ebony hair that ran streaked with silver.

Maybe it was the general air of royalty that hung around Thorin like a cloud of expensive perfume, but suddenly Bilbo became all too aware of the mud on the floor, of the state of her raided pantry and the disarray that was her appearance at that moment; no doubt even her own current odor was mixture of betrayal and old cheese.

She was still standing there gawking, when Dwalin pushed past her, the swing of her hips sending Bilbo crashing straight into the coat rack.  “You’re late,” she scoffed at Thorin.

An irked shadow flashed in Thorin’s icy eyes, but Gandalf hurried to her rescue. Opening the door wider for her, he assured, “A lady is never late, Madam Dwalin - it’s merely her company that is too eager to meet her.”

“Which you would know, if you had ever bothered to act like one,” Thorin countered back at Dwalin. Her voice could only be called as husky, yet every syllable rang as clear as steel. She threw her fur-lined cloak on Gandalf’s courteously extended hand, and locked eyes with Bilbo.

Much later, the dwarves were singing about distant mountains and treasures hiding deep within them, making Bilbo’s heart ache to see the roads untraveled; but in that moment, seeing Thorin standing there against the backdrop of the starlit sky, she first heard a small voice, whispering inside her head. It was a voice quite like her mother’s, the one she had used when Bilbo was little and had been caught red-handed in some mischief.

_Oh_ , _young missy,_ that traitorous voice crooned, as Thorin Oakenshield pursed her thin lips and stepped over the threshold of Bag End, all gracefulness and elegance despite the floorboards audibly straining under her steel boots, _aren’t you in pickle now._

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First written just before the third movie came out and then promptly discarded in a fit of self-consciousness, I decided now was the time to bring this back. What was first intended as a short character study spiraled wildly out of control when it became apparent that I felt compelled to re-write the whole damn journey and then some. Once again it bears mentioning that English isn’t my first language – comments and feedback are always welcome and greatly treasured.


	2. Chapter 2

It was noon, and if Bilbo were forced to make a wild guess, she would say they were somewhere along the Great East Road. In truth, they could have already passed the blasted mountain for all she knew, as Bilbo had never been this far away from home and from here the world definitely looked a lot different than on any of her maps. Now she was beginning to think that when you had seen one hill, you had indeed seen them all. Needless to say, she had envisioned travelling abroad to be little more on the glamorous side.

And then there was the quality of the company to consider, and the topics that it ultimately raised.

“But women aren’t meant for sword-fighting,” Bilbo insisted. “It simply isn’t how things are done.”

”Why not?” Fíli scoffed. She adjusted her shoulders, and inside their respective scabbards her twin swords clinked in equal protest.  “Firstly, women are built to endure more physical pain than men, and secondly, we are excellent tactics by nature.”

Kíli was furiously nodding along, dark curls bouncing. “It has been said that our great-grandmother Thrór once fought single-handedly against seventeen orcs and won, during which she planned the details for Erebor’s new mine shaft.”

Of course, Bofur choose that moment to stage-whisper to Fíli, “If women are supposedly more clever and skillful, then methinks your sister must be hidin’ something in those trousers of hers.”

After the roar of laughter (and Kíli’s irritation) had settled, Fíli asked, this time more soberly, “I take it that there aren’t many female warriors around here?”

”No, definitely not.” Technically, there weren’t _any_ warriors in the Shire, female or not, since Bilbo didn’t think that the old keeper at the Brandywine Bridge could be called such in the present company. Granted, she was yet to witness any of the dwarves in action, but only the very morning she had seen how Kíli shot a rabbit in a way that clearly proved that she wasn’t carrying that bow of hers just for show, and it had been Fíli who then skinned it, unbothered by the blood running down her wrists and whistling as she did. Even Ori seemed to know his way around weapons, even if he otherwise looked like the sort of the type even Bilbo could hope to best in arm wrestling. “When it comes to hobbits, there are only three things a woman can be: a daughter, a mother or a grandmother.”

“So you have some gent waitin’ for you at home then?” Bofur quipped. Suddenly, his face clouded. “You don’t have any littl’ ones, do you?”

“What? No! Do you really think I would risk being disemboweled or - or mauled by a dragon if I had either one of those?” Bilbo scoffed. “On second thought, let me rephrase: I would actually go as far as saying that the word ‘spinster’ was re-invented just for my sake.”

Bofur merely nodded along. “Wise of Gandalf to choose a lass for this job. I always say the womenfolk have more skill when it comes to burglary and theft.”

(“All the more reason why I should’ve been born as one,” Bilbo could hear Nori complain under his breath a few ponies back.)

“It’s because we’re smart enough not to get caught,” Kíli concluded, smirking to her sister in a way that spoke volumes of previous mischief gone unnoticed.

So far Bofur had turned out to be the unexpected gentlemen; he was always there to help Bilbo down from her pony and during the first cold night he had offered her his blanket. Despite this behavior, Bilbo didn’t get the feeling that he was somehow pampering her, or what’s worse, fancying her, and for that, she was eternally grateful. That same courtesy extended to his brother Bombur and to their ever-eccentric cousin Bifur, who had even surprised Bilbo by giving her a small comb of his own carving. Based on the little they chose to say about the subject, Bilbo apparently reminded them of a female relative that was tragically lost the day the dragon arrived to Erebor.

Bilbo had been quick to discover that when it came to gender, there was no discrimination amongst the dwarves. Each was judged and treated based on their usefulness as members of the Company, contents of their tunics be damned. It was all Bilbo had ever wanted, but maybe this was one of those ‘be careful what you wish for’ kinds of scenarios, because now that she had it, she found herself wishing for a little less translucency. She wasn’t exactly a prude, but the sheer amount of belching, cursing, cussing, as well as the endless litany of double-innuendos and profanities was making her wonder if the tips of her ears were staying permanently red from now on. On that front, the women of the Company were definitely the worst, and especially the memory of their first shared bathroom-break haunted Bilbo still, as she had tried to find the farthest and thickest bush available, only to be startled by both Fíli and Kíli, who – chatting happily about their latest bowel movements as they did – had squatted next to her on both sides.

Naturally the Company found her modest behavior and complete lack of survival skills hilarious, or borderline offensive. At first Bilbo had simply scoffed at their snidely comments, refusing to feel ashamed for her own sense of sophistication and even making a silent promise to never to succumb to the dwarves’ philistine ways. But little by little, the jabs had made themselves know, and Thorin’s unimpressed look was something that left her feeling especially ruffled. It had been hinted by Balin that during those long years of exile Thorin had earned her living by making crafts and such by whatever forge she could get her hands on, and it had made Bilbo more than aware that despite her firm belief in her own capableness, she was completely out of her depth in the current company. For what was her ability to write pretty words compared to years of fighting – against orcs or hunger, take your pick. The bite of her sharp tongue definitely wasn’t any more welcome here than it had been in the Shire, and as for her attempts in sharing some gardening tips with the dwarves, for all they knew, she might as well have been talking Elvish.

For someone like her who had been dismissed by her gender for her whole life, accepting criticism based purely on her character was… well, it was disorientating to say the least. Bilbo soon found herself wishing – maybe a little traitorously – that it would be easier if the others, Thorin especially, disliked her only because she was a woman. At least that way she might have had a way to prove them wrong. Now, she could only wallow in the fact that she wasn’t liked, not because she lacked certain physical attributes, but because she was a silly hobbit who had no experience what so ever when it came to surviving in the wilderness, and who was about as cultured in the ways of the world as the patch of dirt stuck beneath Thorin’s boot.

 

* * *

 

To her relief, Bilbo discovered that the men and women of the Company took turns bathing - something she was sure had less to do with actual modesty on anyone’s part and more with Balin’s desperate need to preserve the last hint of royal integrity, as he seemed convinced that witnessing their Queen-to-be’s earthly delights would be awkward for everyone involved the day she actually got crowned.

The first time they stopped by a small stream and prepared for a wash, Bilbo was determined to appear unruffled. For all their faults most hobbit-women were very practical when it came to bodies – their own and everyone else’s – since the sheer number of children meant that when a group of women got together, at some point at least one of them had to either leave in order to breastfeed their youngest, or to simply do it right there; and if there was one thing hobbits hated, it was leaving in the middle of a good chat.

With all that in mind, Bilbo stripped away her clothing and left them neatly folded on a nearby rock. A few summer back, on a visit to Buckland, she had gone skinny-dipping with a group of local girls, and it certainly wasn’t like the dwarves had anything she didn’t have - or so Bilbo thought, before Fíli unceremoniously shrugged away the last of her clothing, revealing a scar that ran the length of her muscular right thigh, massive enough that having it on their skin forever would have send any of Bilbo’s female friends into a proper fit.

Kíli in turn had a collection of smaller marks scattered all over her arms. One of her toes was bent in an odd angle and her left breast carried a scrape that (Bilbo deduced later) came from the continued practice of using a bow. Dwalin was scarred in a way that made it seem like she was in habit of wrestling with bears, while her tattoos reached places on her body where Bilbo was sure that any sort of hot needle should never, ever have any business to venture.

Without really meaning to, Bilbo looked down at herself, to a pair of pale thighs resembling freshly baked breads, bearing in places a light chafe from where they had rubbed against the saddle while riding. Only this morning she had been worrying if the spots would scar, afraid that she would risk being ruined for short dresses from here on out. She had even come close to asking Óin for some salve for them.

As she was mulling this over, a fourth figure breezed past her, and while the swing of Thorin’s hips carried its familiar cadence of indifference even while she was naked, Bilbo was suddenly struck with – not a wave of modesty – but an inexplicable need to shield from her gaze both the spots of rash as well as her own bewilderment over them, and so she kept her eyes averted until it was clear that Thorin was already hip-deep in the water.

That being the case, she happened to look up just as Thorin pulled her long hair over her shoulder in order to wash it. It brought in view the flesh between her shoulder blades, now a patchwork quilt of old, chalk-white scars scattered across the skin like frozen lightning, similar to those Bilbo remembered seeing on Posco Took, who had had his arm scraped by a burning log in his youth.

Once, Bilbo had witnessed a mother squirrel carrying its day-old offspring in its mouth; now, standing on the riverbank while watching the desolation of flesh proudly at display, she felt rather related to that plumb, pink and hairless thing, useless and vulnerable as it had been.

 

* * *

 

After many days on the road, a furious thunderstorm took them by surprise. By the time they were able to find a cave that offered enough shelter for the night, they were utterly drenched. They made camp and got the fire started, Thorin and Gandalf soon disappearing into one of their private meetings that grew more louder and tedious by the day; Bilbo was ready to guess that whatever level of gallantry the wizard had tried to maintain in her company, it was soon to run its course.

After placing down her bedroll, Bilbo emptied her bag that seemed like it had undergone a small flood, in a futile effort to save whatever was left there to salvage. As she was hanging her spare clothes out to dry, the dwarves watched her with growing interest.

Unsurprisingly, Kíli was the first to approach. Lifting up the nearest piece of clothing, she wondered loudly, “You packed _dresses?_ ”

“Of course. Handkerchiefs as well.” Honestly, Bilbo thought, who did she take her for - a man? She may have dashed out of her home in a hurry, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t taken a few extra minutes to pack even the essentials. “Can’t be expected to reclaim a kingdom and show up in court in my gardening clothes, now can I?”

Kíli shrieked with laughter. “Did you hear that, sister?” she asked Fíli. “Why didn’t we think to bring gowns?”

“Perhaps Madam Baggings will loan us some of hers, seeing as she appears to have plenty.“ Before Bilbo managed to stop her, Fíli held up the nearest dress, one of Bilbo‘s favourites; a bright blue with thin white stripes. She draped it over her chest and twirled around, batting her lashes exaggeratingly at the rest of the company. “Well, lads - does it compliment my eyes?“

The legion of dwarves errupted into laughter. Bilbo snacthed the garment from Fíli‘s hands, biting back a bitter response. She all but stomped to the farthest corner of the cave, where she proceed to furiously drape a great deal of handkerchiefs over every flat surface available.

This time it was Balin who came to her. As he was handing her a bowl of stew, he assured,“Don’t mind them, lass. They might have royal blood pumping through their veins, but their mother passed when they were young and they weren’t brought up in the court. A couple of diamonds in the rough, I always say.” He smiled encouragingly at her. “It was a nice gesture, Bilbo.”

“I honestly don’t know what I was thinking,” she said, staring mournfully at the contents of her bowl. The seething hurt had already been replaced by the familiar sense of incompetence. “Then again, that’s how I feel about this whole thing. I wanted to see the world, Balin, if only to find out whether there was more to life than being the talk of the town.”

“And who’s to say your reason isn’t as good as any of ours,” Balin replied, ever gentle. “You are certainly not the only one looking for a chance to prove your worth and that includes Thorin as well. Even though she comes from the Line of Durin, there are those who do not wish to see her reclaiming the throne.” When Bilbo all but blinked at this piece of insight, he added, almost to himself, ”Until this day it remains unforgotten, that it was during a woman’s reign that Erebor fell.”

A few nights before Balin had told them about the fight that took place on the Gates of Moria. Based on it Thorin seemed like the last person on Middle-earth to have anything to prove, even if at times Bilbo still found it hard to reconcile that fierce warrior with the same dwarf who had once managed to get lost in the Shire - twice. “But I thought it was common for dwarves to have queens as well?”

“Unheard of? Certainly not. Common? Not so. Among our people it’s considered good luck to have a daughter, rare as the occasion may be, and many dwarf-women pick of the sword as easy as the men. But the only females ever to rule have all come from the Longbeards house.”

“And why is that?”

Before he answered, Balin gestured her to sit beside him on the bedroll, his movements practiced enough to tell Bilbo that he was probably often responsible for educating youngsters about their own history. Knowing by now how secretive dwarves could be about their culture, she suddenly felt oddly moved by his willingness to share even this bit of information with her. By comparison, it even brought to mind all those time the elderly hobbits had scoffed at her academic interest.

Only when Bilbo was sat as comfortably as she could ever hope to be, Balin started to speak. “In the dawn of time, when Aulë molded the Seven First Dwarves from the stone, he then laid them in deep places where they slept until the world was ready for them to wake. To each he also gave a mate – except for Durin, for reasons that we do not know; maybe in his great wisdom Aulë considered her strong enough on her own, given how she was the only woman of the seven. If that truly was the case, then he wasn’t wrong: upon her waking Durin wandered far, giving names to places and things as she saw fit. Finally she came to Kheled-zâram – that’s Mirrormere in the common tongue – and, upon seeing the stars reflected in its surface in the formation of a crown, took it as a sign to found her kingdom there. So began the time of Khazad-dûm, which nowadays is more commonly known as Moria.”

“Um, not that this isn’t terribly fascinating,” Bilbo stammered, “and I really don’t mean to be rude, but… What does all that got to do with dwarven queens?”

“It’s because Durin was the first of them and – given how rarely dwarf-women are born - after her there has only been five, Thrór included. During her days of rule Durin earned the name ‘Deathless’, since a prophecy tells that one day, when the need of her people is most dire, she will return to aid them once more. Each of the five queens after her have been said to carry some resemblance to her, but none so much as –“

“- Thorin,” Bilbo finished. She was surprised to learn how breathless her own voice sounded; the tale had swept her along, the bowl of stew perched on top of her knee gone long cold. In her mind’s eye she could still see Durin standing on the bank of that magical pool reflecting back the sky, the image of it not unlike the depths of Thorin’s eyes.

Balin nodded. “Óin is the one to tamper with foretell, so if asked, he could tell you how it has been taken as a sign itself that after Thorin, the next two in line for the throne of Erebor – should it be reclaimed - also happen to be women. If Thorin’s sister Dís was still alive, she would have been the fourth. Not since the days of Durin herself have so many women been born in the immediate royal family.”

“Do you believe –“

“Why do you insist on filling the poor burglar’s head with such nonsense?”

It was Dwalin who had cut off Bilbo’s question, her flame of black hair now plastered wetly against her skull like a crushed spider and an unhappy scowl lurking behind equally soaked beard.

While Balin merely said something about how it was important that Bilbo, too, should know the history of the very place she was helping them to reach, Dwalin didn’t look all that convinced as she squinted her dark eyes at the pair of them. By now, Bilbo had come to understand that Dwalin would rather cut off her own hand than be caught gossiping about Thorin behind her back like some common chinwagger. After having the misfortune of being the favorite topic of countless gossipers back in Hobbiton, her hostile sincerity was the very thing that had made Bilbo respect her – not that she would ever have the guts to admit it to her directly.

As she moved away, Dwalin accidentally (or maybe not) thumped the butt of her axe against Bilbo’s kneecap, hard enough to make her eyes water. By extension it certainly broke the spell, and Bilbo became once again depressingly aware of their humble surroundings, and most of all, of her own sorry state of being that no amount of storytelling could save. She now felt rather foolish for taking such tales of rebirth and whatnot so seriously when there were more pressing matters at hand, like finding out if she still had any dry undergarments left.

But that night she found herself lying awake, spying Thorin as she sat by the small fire, after insisting once again that she should take the first watch. As Bilbo watched, she could see the image of the flames reflected in her eyes, a vision similar to that which undoubtedly haunted Thorin’s mind ever still.

Only now Bilbo was beginning to understand that there were perhaps more ways to be restricted by one’s nature than the simple misfortune of living in a society based on narrow-mindedness and having a collection of meddling relatives. Dwarves may have allowed their female population the choice of independent lifestyle, but Thorin certainly didn’t seem all that liberated by her gender, as she now carried the expectations of her foremothers on her already heavy shoulders.

In a sudden surge of sympathy, Bilbo wanted to reach out to her, if only to assure Thorin that at least she wasn’t following her because she believed her to be anything else than she was – that is, a snippy spoilsport with the ability to include copious amounts of distaste into the way she now pronounced the word ‘halfling’, an expression Thorin undoubtedly favored because it illustrated how lacking she found Bilbo to be in every possible regard.

At least one thing Bilbo was certain of: she and Thorin would never be part of the same world.

 

* * *

 

Some days later, after many mishaps and near-death experiences, Bilbo accidentally came into the possession of a magical ring. As a habit she was prone to deep self-analyze and could therefore already tell that whatever the effect, keeping the ring hidden from Gandalf would eventually come back to bite her. The most prominent proof of that was, that if the ring had been completely harmless and without ill-effect, then surely its previous owner had been something else than a bag of bones who now spent all of its – his? hers? theirs? - time skulking nearly nude in a cave,  preferring word plays only slightly to cannibalism. Although there had certainly been times in Bilbo’s life when a quiet existence in a cave all alone and unbothered sounded like a blessing, in this case, it was safe to say that the creature wasn’t exactly living the dream.

It was – to put it mildly – rather worrying.

But then, by another accident entirely, she happened to save Thorin’s life. It was an experience that made her contemplate how it would be safer for all involved if she just… kept the ring for the time being. After all, there _was_ Thorin’s apparent tendency to charge at beasts many times her size to consider, and a dragon surely was considerably larger than a warg.

So she kept the ring for the sake of someone else, and rarely used it for other purposes than saving lives.

After all, that was the point of carrying a weapon, wasn’t it?

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 “I own at least a dozen doilies.”

Thorin actually rolled her eyes at that. “Do I need to remind you that I’ve been to your home? If Ori becomes inspired, I know who to blame.”

It was the morning of their second day at Beorn’s. When Bilbo had woken up that morning, she discovered the whole Company outside, sprawled in the grass; only Dwalin had made the effort to be sharpening her weapons, even if in truth her movements were closer to polishing. Her hair had been free from its usual braid and Dori was standing behind her, combing his fingers through the black tendrils, his nose scrunching up in distaste from time to time as he plucked away the occasional twig or bone or teeth, courtesy of the Goblin Caves.

Eager to take a look around, Bilbo had gathered some toast and honey and other ingredients for a makeshift picnic, venturing then farther on the property. This is how she had come across Thorin, on a small meadow near the tree-line. When she had spotted Bilbo, she had tried to look as important as ever - an attempt that was ruined by the fleet of enormous butterflies resting on her outstretched hand.

Bilbo wasn’t exactly sure how it had happened (maybe it was something that naturally followed when you did something completely stupid and reckless like saved another’s’ lives), but some minutes later, they were sitting down in the grass, eating toast and taking turns in sharing secrets.

Without being perplexed, Bilbo went on, “No, but here’s the thing: I can’t knit to save my life. In fact, I can’t even sew well enough to patch anything more than the occasional tear in my jacket. That army of doilies, they have all been passed onto me by some needle-happy relative. One of my aunts once tried to teach me how to make a dress, before she gave up hope, saying that I had ‘as much skill as blind burglar’.” She stopped there and blinked. “Which now sounds like a very ominous description, I might add.” 

“Interesting,” Thorin mused, and while her face retained the impression of polite interest, her voice carried a hint of rare mischief. “So your reputation as a proper hobbit is a lace-covered lie. It makes me wonder if Gandalf has some hidden knowledge in dressmaking, since he clearly saw your true nature by insisting on enlisting you.”

Bilbo risked a glance back towards the house, where the tip of Gandalf’s hat could be seen through the open window. She regretted it immediately; the idea of the wizard silently judging the dress sense of everyone he encountered was simply too much.

Still giggling to herself, Bilbo turned back to Thorin. “Now you. What is it that only a few in this Company know about you?”

Thorin fell into contemplating silence, giving Bilbo a rare chance to simply watch her. For once, she was wearing only a simple tunic and was without her armor and enormous furs. Feeble was not the word Bilbo would ever have used to describe her, but there was something delicate about her in that moment, sitting so uncharacteristically bare in the tall grass with a piece of toast in hand. But even here, in the safety of Beorn’s might, Orcrist was resting on her side and from time to time her fingers absently brushed the sword’s hilt. It reminded Bilbo of the hares that populated Shire’s cabbage fields, always on the look-out for lurking danger even if there was none, simply because it was in their nature.

For her own amusement, Bilbo momentarily entertained the idea of Thorin living a life as a hobbit wife, with a kingdom that consisted only of a modest home, and in lieu of hundreds of subjects a mere handful of children there to tangle from her apron strings. The idea felt instantly ludicrous: she was about as likely to be tied into the common house and hearth, than Bilbo herself to take on the life of a dwarven royalty in all its luxury.

Thorin shook her out of these thoughts. With a wicked smile on her thin lips, she confessed, “I play the harp.”

“You play the – _wait_ , is that a euphemism?” In a way of answer Thorin only raised her brows. “I take that as a ‘no’. So, you - a harpist. That’s…“ As it happens, Bilbo found that she actually didn’t have any idea how to react to this new piece of information, at least in a way that didn’t involve bursting into a series of nervous giggles or simply asking: _how?_

“I first picked it up only to please my mother. She was very ill at the time and, knowing that she wasn’t very pleased with my decision to focus on my training as a warrior, I wanted to do something in her honor.” A splash of honey had ended up on Thorin’s thumb and Bilbo watched, intently, as she licked it off, before continuing, “I wonder how it would feel to wield an instrument now - I haven’t had the chance to play in many years.”

The confession reminded Bilbo of the Company’s stay in Rivendell. She recalled the dinner that had been accompanied by traditional elven music, and she thought how hard it must have been for Thorin to listen to such a concerto, without the chance to get to play herself. The idea of her sneaking in during the night to play in secret nearly made Bilbo snort out loud, but she stopped herself just in time, afraid of how it might give the wrong impression that she was somehow mocking her. This easy friendship between them was new, since Bilbo was fully aware that Thorin generally wasn’t the type to have early morning picnics with. She felt oddly privileged, even if some not-so-small part of her couldn’t help but to think that any moment now, Thorin would brutally murder her, if only to make Bilbo keep worth of her promise to take her secrets to her grave.

It was once again Bilbo’s turn. After a moment’s consideration, she admitted, “I used to hate my name.”

The majority of the names of hobbit-women were related to plants and nature, but a large number of girls also carried the name of some jewel or even metal; a curious trend for a folk so unaware of their namesakes’ true values. Whereas Bilbo was sure the dwarves could appreciate such tradition if they were to learn about it, she had neglected to mention it for reasons that were not entirely clear even to herself. Not that she disliked her name per se – the older she had gotten the more comfortably it sat with her, but as a child many of her friends had wondered its oddness and some of them had been quite ruthless with their immature taunts.

 “It’s a type of magic sword, I think,” she confessed, fighting down a wave of embarrassment. “My mother read quite a bit when she was so heavily pregnant that wandering the woods just wasn’t considered safe anymore, and she picked the name from one of her storybooks. Both of my parents’ names start with a B, so one can see where she was going with it, and I think it goes without saying that I prefer Bilbo over Begonia or Bonnet, even if it’s rather misleading in its meaning.”

Since the initial confession Thorin had looked like she was having a hard time not to let her amusement show. But once Bilbo herself admitted how unsuitable such a name was for someone like her, her eyes went soft. “So other than inclining that you were born to fight,” she asked, more curious than anything else, “why did it bother you so much?”

“Well, it isn’t exactly what you might call girly!” Bilbo scoffed, miffed that Thorin was either slow (which was unlikely) or extremely interested in humiliating her further. Then a curious inkling suddenly occurred to her. “Dwarves don’t have differing names for boys and girls, do they?”

“No,” Thorin said simply, looking at her like the mere thought was ludicrous.

Bilbo rolled her eyes. “Figures.”

Thorin then admitted that she didn’t like the taste of fish, and after that Bilbo – prompted by the notion of water - proceeded to confess that she wasn’t sure if she still knew how to swim, since all the Buckland ponds had been shallow enough for her toes to reach the bottom at all times. The last time she had held herself afloat, she had been barely old enough to have grown into her feet-hair.

That made Thorin shake her head, making the collection of silvery beads she carried in her hair chime like tiny bells. “Now might be a good time to mention that a great lake lies between us and the Mountain,” she quirked dryly.

“No offence, but I think the lake is the least of our problems.” Noticing the shadow that quickly fell over Thorin’s face, Bilbo continued, “You do know I’m talking about the dragon, don’t you?”

Thorin stayed quiet for a moment, watching how the grass around them danced in the wind. Finally, she said, “They don’t call it the dragon-sickness for nothing. Some say that it was my grandmother’s lust for gold that lured Smaug to Erebor.” Her voice was barely above whisper, when she confessed, “Sometimes I wonder if they were right.”

So fragile was her manner that in moment, that Bilbo had to suppress the sudden urge to take her hands into hers. “Thorin, that dragon destroyed your home and drove your people to exile,” she tried to reason, shocked. “Knowing that, how could anyone in their right mind blame your family for what happened?”

Thorin’s laughter was both unexpected and mirthless. “I sometimes forget how little you know of the world outside your little corner of it,” she said, her tone uncharacteristically gentle. It took on a steelier undertone, when she continued, “Among the races, we dwarves are known for our love for metals and jewels, but it’s the women of our folk that appreciate all things shining above the rest. It’s for our delight and pleasure that the men dig so deep, to find the rarest stones to give as gifts or when in courting. It can be hard work, you see, to win the affections of dwarf-maidens – or, to give satisfaction to a Queen who only appreciates her image when it’s reflected in gold.”

A stronger breeze carried through the meadow then, and although the wind blew from the south, Bilbo felt a sudden chill crawl up the back of her neck. She thought of Thorin, asking for an army of dwarves to aid her on this quest and only managing to gather the odd twelve, and was then reminded of something Balin had once told her, something she fully understood only now. _“Until this day it remains unforgotten, that it was during a woman’s reign that Erebor fell.”_

In truth, Thorin wasn’t fighting to gain honor to herself, rather than she was undoing the mistakes of her grandmother or maybe even restoring faith in her entire gender. By reclaiming Erebor and killing Smaug, she could clear her family’s name and prove that superstition was reserved only for those of lesser courage (and less cleavage).

Bilbo could sense her heart suddenly picking up. In a rush of mixed emotions, she heard herself blurt, “I signed the contract because I didn’t want to get married.”

The morning after Gandalf had brought the dwarves into Bag End, Bilbo had woken up to an empty house. She had wandered from room to room, finding that everything was as it should be; there, safely back in their familiar place in the cupboard were her plates, a gift from her late mother; there, her favorite armchair by the fireplace, now thankfully dwarf-free. In fact, she might have taken the whole previous night as a dream, if it hadn’t been for the unsigned contract on the mantel. Beside it had been a pile mail that still sat noticeably unanswered, like an anchor chaining her to her old life.

No matter how self-aware Bilbo was of her own eccentricity or her non-existing interest in marriage, it didn’t change the fact that she was a wealthy bachelorette living in the most exquisite smial there was. On top of that, she was easy on the eyes and came from a decent family. All that combined, blaming her lack of spouse to an ill twist of fate would mean outright lying. She was alone simply because she chose to be.

Still, the entire Shire seemed to live in anticipation that someday, someone special would eventually break through those defenses she had so carefully crafted over the years, and as a proof of that there was that pile of envelops, each letter from a different admirer, eagerly asking her to join them for an afternoon walk or a late lunch. The bravest one – a cheeky farmer from Buckland – was outright enquiring her measurements for the upcoming wedding dress.

Bilbo had stared those letters, imagining the different lives she could live with each men – as a farmer’s wife, or maybe even as a grocer’s like Thorin had predicted on their first meeting. She pictured the children they would have together and the ridiculous names they would gift them with, and how those same children would slowly but surely steal her time and thoughts, until the possibility of an adventure was nothing but a fleeting dream once had. She would grow old, making flower crowns out of daisies for her numerous grandchildren, without never knowing the weight a real throne could cast on someone’s head.

She had pictured all that in great detail – and then she had grabbed the contract, and all but fled from her life.

Now, she was sitting on an enchanted meadow worlds away; in a span of just one day, she had become both a thief and a killer. Looking at her hands now, feeling the phantom pull of the ring in her pocket, the idea of a summer wedding actually turned her stomach.

Bilbo came back from her thoughts when she sensed Thorin tensing at her side; when she turned to look at her, she found her oddly at unease. Her words carried a strain, as she said, “So is that why you came – to escape the unwanted attentions? Or the restrictions of womanhood? I confess that your reasons to join this quest have baffled me from the start. It isn’t the gold or the fame you seek, nor the battle. Unlike the others, you have no ties to my kin and you certainly don’t owe me loyalty.”

“Maybe I just didn’t want to be bound by anything or anyone I couldn’t believe in whole-heartedly,” Bilbo argued, now feeling more than a little irritated herself. She was well aware that her justifications were small when compared to Thorin’s, but she was tired of rising to her own defense time after time. All this should have been past them by now. The endless tug of war was wearing her thin; she suddenly saw no reason why it needed to continue any longer. “And I could, you know.”

“Could what?”

“Owe loyalty to you. That is, unless it’s something only other dwarves can do. If not, then is there some phrase I have to repeat, to pledge my alliance? I hope for both of our sakes that it isn’t a song, because my voice isn’t exactly –“

Bilbo’s words died on her tongue, when she saw the look on Thorin’s face: it was a mask of pure shell-shock. ‘Speechless’ was the expression Bilbo had wished upon her many times, but now when she finally achieved it, she found herself hoping she hadn’t. “Did - did I say something wrong?” she stuttered.

“You want to pledge yourself,” Thorin repeated slowly, sounding more disbelieving by each word, “ _to me.”_

Thorin was driving her quite mad; it was infuriating, drifting between such extreme emotions. In one minute, Bilbo wanted to strangle her in her own braids, or alternatively throw herself down from the nearest cliff if it would only spare her from the agony of hearing that preposterous tone ever again; the next, she found herself harboring poetic notions of Thorin’s likeness to the first warm day of spring after a long winter. The latter usually led to something as equally stupid as her going alone against a bunch of orcs, or to the very thing she was now about to do.

In a rush of fool-headedness she staggered to her feet and stared down at Thorin, her small sword now ready at hand to be offered to her. For once the blade was serenely silver instead of the ominous blue, and Bilbo was almost shocked to realize that despite her obvious lack in skill, her given name wasn’t so farfetched anymore. In Rivendell, Balin had told her how swords were named after the great deeds they did in battle, so by that account, maybe she had finally reclaimed hers.

But she most certainly wasn’t a warrior, knew herself well enough to understand that no amount of training exercises with Fíli and Kíli would never make her into one. But somehow it didn’t bother her in a way it had before, since these days she seemed to be pulling tricks more suitable for wizards; she could walk in the shadows unseen and put her sharp tongue in good use when playing riddles with creatures that lurked in the deep. Worrying what she lacked was behind her and now, Bilbo was keen to focus on what she had become, and if Thorin couldn’t appreciate that, then that was her loss.

If Bilbo had expected more arguments, she couldn’t have been more wrong; without another word Thorin rose to her feet. A single daisy grew by her foot and on her way she leaned to pick it up, finally meeting her eyes with the flower in hand. She then silently beckoned Bilbo to come closer, but instead of asking her to do a curtsey or to kneel, she put her left hand on her shoulder, for the right to forgo Orcrist’s handle in order to place the daisy into her curls.

“Then I shall make you the shield-maiden of Erebor,” she announced, before adding, a touch ruefully, “even if at the time I carry no crown nor shield.”

“I’m sorry you lost it – your shield, I mean.” Bilbo was sorry for the other thing as well, but giving condolences now seemed a little late.

Thorin let out a small laugh, and for once, it was completely free of mockery. “I think I’m starting to see it as it was: a mere relic - a token of good luck if you will,” she assured.  “And as far as luck goes, I seem to have found a suitable replacement for it.”

While she could feel her cheeks growing hot, Bilbo had time to wonder if all such ceremonies (ennoblements? She wasn’t even sure of the term) were as intimate. Thorin now moved her hand so it gently curved over her left ear, the tips of her fingers resting against the back of her skull. Being this close, Bilbo noticed that part of Thorin’s hair was still wet and smelled of – birch? Honey? She found it difficult to tell, as she couldn’t be entirely sure if the scent truly originated from Thorin or the verdant meadow around them. Either way, Bilbo was suddenly glad that she herself had already washed the night before, since it would have been extremely awkward to be standing there now smelling like a troll’s armpit.

Gone were the days when she had had the mind to fuss over her belongings, yet alone appearance: while on the road Bilbo had become so accustomed to the layer of sweat and dirt covering her from head to toe that she sometimes caught herself absently scraping it away with her pinky. All the hobbits back home would have found her positively feral; no wonder Thorin now smiled at her so proudly.

There were definitely no girls like Thorin Oakenshield in the Shire. Bilbo very much doubted there was anyone quite like her in all being, unique as she was in both her fury and brutal tenderness.

Her late mother would have said that Bilbo was superficial like that – always running after the most impossible of things.

 

* * *

 

Once the Company ventured into Mirkwood, the quality of the conversation took an unexpected turn. In all honesty, Bilbo blamed the air.

“I wonder if there are any female orcs at all,” she said (for what turned out to be) out loud. They had just passed one especially memorable tree for what she reckoned was most likely the third time, and on each of those times it had rather reminded her of one.

Kíli, who was walking ahead of her in line, made a sound of protest. “But there has to be! How else would there me so many of them? We have slaughtered them in numbers for centuries, to no avail.”

Bilbo shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe there’s a spell. Or maybe they just… grow from the stone?”

“No, that’s us, remember?” Kíli grinned, but next to her, Bofur frowned, like he at least was giving the idea some serious thought.

It was actually something Bilbo had wondered for a while now, although it had taken her some time to understand just why that was. Eventually she had remembered that for all his threats and insults, Azog hadn’t actually made a single hurtful comment about Thorin’s womanhood, and not about anyone else’s for that matter. Bilbo thought that was rather civil for someone whose other hobbies seemed to be beheadings and torture.

Just then Bifur said something that included a series of rapid hand-gestures. Bofur nodded along, once again captivated.

“What did he say?” Bilbo asked.

“That they might have a queen. Like bees.”

Bilbo wasn’t convinced in the slightest. “Bees lay eggs.” She tried to shape an egg for him by cupping her palms together and then pulling them apart. “Are you seriously suggesting that orcs hatch from eggs?”

Bifur grumbled something in return. “Bee-eggs don’t _hatch_ ,” Bofur translated valiantly. “They’re soft, like frogspawn.”

“Oh, so suddenly you’re the expert?” Bilbo huffed, glaring daggers at Bifur. She was the one with a garden full of those little troublemakers after all.

“He has built several beehives in his life. Knows his business, he does.”

Fíli seemed to decide it was time to bring the conversation back on right track. “What made you think there wouldn’t be any female orcs?” she asked.

“Well,” Bilbo said, “they all _do_ look the same, don’t they? I mean, not face-wise, but for all their – you know – lumps and bumps. And they all seem to have sharp teeth.”

“And they smell,” said Bofur.

“No, your feet smell,” Kíli argued, “orcs _reek_.”

“Well _excuse me_ your royal highness, but you don’t exactly stink like roses yourself…”

While Fíli tried to prevent her sister from sticking some arrows up Bofur’s nose, Dwalin rounded on Bilbo.

“Isn’t that what you once said about us?” Bilbo couldn’t help but to notice how her eyes looked a little wild for wandering in the forest for so long. “That ‘cause of the beards, other races have difficulty in telling our women and men apart. “

“I didn’t put it like that.” But in all honesty - she remembered with twinge – she kind of had. “I mean, when you think about it, all elves look alike as well!”

“To which are you comparing us, exactly?” Dwalin inquired darkly. “Orcs – or elves?”

Bilbo knew just then that she had talked herself into a corner. Luckily Bombur chose that moment to trip on a branch, roll off the road and straight into what turned out to be an enchanted pond. He was soundly asleep within seconds and couldn’t be wakened by any amount of shouting or shaking.

Bilbo stood by Thorin and together, they watched four other dwarves struggling as they heaved Bombur’s bulk up and on their shoulders.

“That’s it,” Thorin decided grimly. “We’re taking a shortcut.”

An hour later, they passed the orc-like tree for the fourth time.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jim Allan has noted that bilbo is a kind of Spanish sword deriving its name from Bilbao (the city); here, I decided to play with that idea a little.


	4. Chapter 4

 

“Aunt, are you actually wearing pearls?” Kíli’s gleeful voice carried throughout the room. “You know they’ll crack like eggs the moment you knock them against something hard!”

Thorin bristled, and then ducked her head in visible embarrassment.

They were finally safely in Lake-town, and their arrival had certainly sent the local tongues waggling. While they had been escorted to meet the town’s Master, Balin had explained to Bilbo that since hardly any of the townspeople were alive during the days of Dale, this was probably the first time they had set their eyes on the sight of dwarves outside of the old tales.

Especially the women of their Company were a cause of much commotion: apparently the humans found it impossible to comprehend that any female should have body hair anywhere but on their head and pits, and such misfortune was to be pointed out by as much gaping and leering as possible. Kíli and Fíli took to it with their usual humor, throwing almost lewd winks as they went and blowing kisses at the gaping men, whereas Dwalin looked menacing enough to render all jokesters speechless. But it was Thorin who received the blunt edge of their crude astonishment, as she led her Company along the narrow streets of a town ruled by generations of males.

Like many hardships before, Thorin seemed to take it in her stride, undoubtedly all-too accustomed to such attention during her long years of working alongside other races. But for some reason Bilbo found herself extremely affronted on her sake, up to a point where she was so absorbed in it that she nearly missed it when a group of young girls shrieked in horror-filled glee at the sight of her own hairy feet, now covered in frost.

Of course, all that had changed when it became clear exactly who Thorin was and what she was attempting to do. ‘Lady of the Silver Fountains’ they called her, the old poetic title quick to find its way back to people’s mouths, if only in an attempt to cajole Thorin into sharing with them the vast treasures of Erebor. It certainly was something that had seemed to both please as well as embarrass her, as she in her current unkempt appearance looked anything but ladylike.

(Not that Bilbo had any right to pass judgment, since she currently had a bad cold, and with her running nose and aching bones felt about as fetching as that bag of pony dung she sometimes fertilized her garden with.)

By Bilbo’s experience, Thorin didn’t much care for vanity and why should she really, effortlessly graceful as she was in her own right. But having a group of strangers there to gape at her and grand her such a title clearly made it seem like she ought to have given them something else than she now was – barrel-pounded and reeking of fish guts - and Bilbo found her even more silent than usual, as they all made their way up the steps to the town-hall where they were to stay for the night.

As they were given a collection of clean clothes, the new garments Thorin picked for herself didn’t much differ from the likes of the rest of the Company’s. But when she emerged from her room that evening, she had her hair combed neatly and her sideburns exclusively braided, their new clasps reminding Bilbo of glimmering snowflakes. On her forehead she bore a silver band of sorts, from which a single larger pearl dangled like a daisy-white petal.

Bilbo was still lost in effort to close her own mouth which had fallen open in mute wonder, when Kíli had already decided to run hers.

As the whole room steered into awkward silence, Bilbo found herself wishing that she had had the sense to leave certain beardless menace in her cell. No doubt Kíli could have driven even Thranduil into despair in no time at all, given how quickly she and that red-haired Captain had fallen into sharing archery tips, as if the row of bars between them was simply a slight discomfort.

It was the memory of Mirkwood that then reminded Bilbo of the rare time when Thorin herself had brought up the subject of her appearance. During the Company’s imprisonment the topics of their conversations had been vast and many in nature, but only once had she heard Thorin speak lowly of herself, when at the second night Bilbo had found her curled against the bars of her cell with the desperation of a caged beast.

“First Rivendell, then the Goblin Caves and now this. Do you have any idea,” she had whispered, every low word out of her mouth venomous enough to leave Bilbo’s skin tingling, “how it feels to arrive on the doorstep of another’s kingdom, dressed in rags like some old crone and with nothing to my name but a hollow title – knowing that in halls of others, the memory of Erebor is now nothing more than a lingering evidence of the madness that haunts the line of Durin.” Thorin smiled then, the flash of teeth like a glint of a bared blade in the dark. “Would you like to know what the great Elven King told me, before he left us here to rot? He said: ‘ _There is only one Queen worth recognizing in these lands, as there ever will be.’_ ” Her laughter was bitter. “Needless to say that he was talking of that White Witch who chooses to hide in the safety of her forest.”

There was a time when Bilbo would have been seized by this sudden insight into Thorin’s usually so guarded mind, but now the quotation only served to make her angry. It appeared that despite the glitz and glamour, deep down Thranduil was just the same as those old patrons back home, who at times had acted like Bilbo’s mere existence was a threat to their manhood. “Oh, for the love of – Thorin, can’t you see that he’s scared of you! If it was all the same to him, why would he bother locking up the lot of you? He’s petrified of the idea that you’re going to make your way into that mountain, slay the damned dragon and by doing so, force him to eat his words like the pompous idiot he is!”

Thorin had said nothing, and in the silence that followed, Bilbo could hear her own words echoing around the small cell. When she was sure that she had once again only managed to insult her, Thorin finally spoke. “You know,” she said slowly, in a tone Bilbo was surprised to recognize as wry amusement, “for someone who claims to be so mesmerizedby the elves, you talk very poorly about their ruler.”

Relieved, Bilbo had launched into an explanation how the elves in Rivendell were just fine, whereas here – thanks to Thranduil’s questionable hospitality - she had just spent the better part of the previous day crawling around the tunnels like a mouse while avoiding being seen, so yes, in her mind, there was a big difference between Elrond’s people and these tree-hugging bigots, who, by the way, would do well by taking some pointers from hobbits when it came to the comforts of underground housing.

By the end of her rant, Thorin’s spirits seemed to have lifted at least some amount, and they had moved on to planning their escape.

Back in the moment, Bilbo recognized the familiar look of anguish in Thorin’s eyes, the doubt that seemed to haunt her every step like a resilient shadow. Whereas Bilbo was sure that none of the company – Kíli the least – truly questioned Thorin’s right to rule, she also knew that dwarves couldn’t be trusted when it came to simple flattery. Sure, they practically praised poetry about their craft and precious stones, but Bilbo remembered that one time early on their travel when she had tried to compliment Kíli about her delicate hands (a praise that was greatly appreciated among the hobbit-women who spent their days digging in the garden and eating foods that made their fingers swell enough to resemble their favorite sausages) and she had nearly smacked Bilbo with her bow.

It was somewhat ironic that in addition to being a noble snob, Thorin sometimes carried modesty like it was the only crown she had the right to, and Bilbo could now see how on the long run that was doing her more harm than good. Here, in a sorry excuse for a palace, in a town that smelled like fish and surrounded by men who clearly had some issues when it came to appreciating their own wives and daughters, let alone a dwarven queen, Thorin was dressed to her finest for the first time in ages, and damn her if Bilbo was going to let some ill-timed jeering take that away from her.

In a moment of self-rightful anger, Bilbo cleared her sore throat. “Well, I for one happen to think you look beautiful. Very, er, majestic and whatnot.”

Thorin, who was already halfway between removing the pearls, actually stopped and blinked. For a moment, she seemed to be taken aback; then, a cool sneer broke on her face. “And what a high praise that is, coming from someone with such knowledge on monarchs,” she uttered icily, lips pursed in distain.

Bilbo wasn’t going to be swayed by that; by now, she had learned that Thorin’s way to conceal any lurking insecurities was to deflect every bit of criticism she found directed at her way. “Listen – I know that I’m not exactly what you lot would call an _expect_ , since the closest we get to having kings and queens in the Shire is during the Yule festival, when we crown the –“ Realizing that she was rambling, and that knowledge of the Annual Turnip Court was probably not all that fascinating to her current audience, Bilbo re-steered herself. “My point is, that you could do worse. For example, you could be claiming your throne by wearing a crown made entirely out of twigs. Now _that_ was an interesting choice of décor – where I come from, we usually reserve those for pigs and pets when they win first prize at the local fare.”

Rule number one with dwarves: _when in doubt, blame the elves_. After a beat, all the Company erupted into a howling laughter; Bofur was practically rolling around with it, and even Thorin’s dry smirk widened into an actual smile. It also provided a timid distraction for Fíli, whom Bilbo saw elbowing Kíli hard in the ribs and whispering some stern words into her younger sister’s ear, making them soon red with shame.

The next morning as they boarded the boat, Bilbo was pleased to discover that Thorin still carried the pearls on her person, as now did both Fíli and Kíli.

 

* * *

 

It was during the Company’s first night in Erebor, when Óin happened to tell her the story of Aulë and Yavanna.

At the time it had seemed but an accidental meeting, as Bilbo had simply bumped into Óin when he was setting up a kettle over a small fire and had then asked her to join him. But much later, she couldn’t help but to think that perhaps there was some meaning to be found in the fact that from all the dwarves, this tale had been told to her by the one who could foretell.

“It appears that when _Mahal_  - Aulë - first made us dwarves, his wife Yavanna was worried that we would cut down all the trees she in turn had created, so she went behind his husband’s back and told others of it – not to deceive him you see, but to keep safe what was dearest to her.”

Since Bilbo had done some reading during the Company’s stay in Rivendell, she knew who Yavanna was. Now, she was more than a little surprised to discover how the Queen of the Earth was supposedly married to the Maker, who – if dwarves were anything to go by – had little interest in all things green and growing. All in all, it seemed like yet another example in the long string of cosmic jokes played on her expense, and Bilbo was so focused on it that she nearly missed wondering why Óin was telling this to her in the first place.

“Well, since there are still forests aplenty, I assume she was successful,” Bilbo said, tone carefully neutral and perhaps a little louder than was strictly necessary; Óin’s new ear-trumpet was an actual trumpet he had picked up from Lake-town and so far, Bilbo was left thinking that it did more harm than good.

Óin nodded. “Her plea was heard - The Ents came to be. Some say that all the Tree-Shepherds are gone now, but if the signs are right, I think there’ll come a time when they step forth once more to do their duty.”

As she stirred her tea, Bilbo was pleased to discover yet another reference she was familiar with. Her mother had loved tales of all sorts and one of her favorites was the legend she had heard from some Buckland friend who had lived just shy of the eastern border, near to the Old Forrest, where the trees presumably moved on their own or even conversed from time to time. She made a mental note to add ‘talking tree-men’ to the list of creatures that apparently were a thing that existed - right under such beings as dragons, trolls, stone giants and what seemed like deities with some marital troubles. To be fair, it was turning out to be a lot lengthier list than she had originally expected.

“So Yavanna rallied an army. Quite the peaceful one it seems, but still. I just…” When Óin looked at her expectantly, Bilbo cleared her throat. “Well, it seems a little silly of her not to discuss it with her husband first, that’s all.”

“And who’s to say that she didn’t,” Óin murmured, in a manner that seemed almost sympathetic in nature. He had been about to take another sip of his tea, but now, a deep frown appeared between his bushy brows and he stared down into his cup, as if his eyes were seeing something far beyond its murky contents. “There’s often some lesson to be learned from these tales of old, but the one thing they have the habit of leaving untold is the domestic side of things. Perhaps Yavanna did approach him, but _Mahal_ was so sure of his success that he simply refused to listen.”

And that had been it; the next minute Óin was refilling her cup, asking her about this and that and by doing so, steering the conversation into different direction. But later Bilbo found herself thinking that if it was simply Aulë’s bullheadedness that had been the issue there, then it was most definitely a trait he had passed onto his creations. The dwarves were a stubborn bunch to begin with, but even before her feet were firmly planted on Erebor’s soil, Bilbo had come to learn how especially with Thorin, such things as valor and extreme stupidity always seemed to go hand in hand. Bilbo immensely hated her for it. She also hadn’t been aware that it was possible to feel so enamored by someone that you thought it sweet when you witnessed them shouting obscenities at a dragon.

If Thrór had been anything like her granddaughter, it was easy for Bilbo to understand why she once had had an entire kingdom bending over backwards in attempt to meet her every fancy, however increasingly greedy they had become near the end. Before, Bilbo had never felt the need to draw sword and yet here she was, with a promise that she would be continuously willing to lay down her life for Thorin’s sake.

Bilbo was aware that dwarves were quick to make friends to whom they stayed fiercely loyal till the end, so by those standards her behavior was most admirable. But as a hobbit, she was prone to a certain degree of healthy self-preservation, and thus (during rare moments of clarity which usually occurred when Thorin wasn’t near her vicinity) she sometimes worried how easily such blind admiration could lead to miscalculation of judgment. It was something Bilbo had first thought after their climb down from the Carrock, as she was wiping the blood off her sword, while wondering exactly into what lengths she would be willing to go in the future if it was only Thorin who asked it from her. She wouldn’t be able to mine riches or to produce crafts or whatever it was that dwarves did according to Thorin when… well, when they were as soft from the head as Bilbo now was, but the truth was that she had already even used her Ring to help her, ignoring the loud voice at the back of her skull which told her to keep it hidden.

Perhaps she wasn’t even aware of it herself, but Thorin’s greatest attribute seemed to be the way she could inspire loyalty, and even with a handful of soldiers in her command that could turn from being a gift into a curse in just a blink of an eye.

 

Before Bilbo’s first venture down the secret pathway, Thorin had insisted that she should stay firmly on that side of the Mountain and wait for her to return with the Arkenstone.

Naturally, Bilbo had been stunned. “But… surely you want to come down there, even if it’s just for a moment? To see your home?” she had stammered.

It only took that simple admission to bring Thorin on the offensive. “I’ll only have the Stone,” she hissed. “It is not greed – it’s my call to arms!”

The sun was setting in the horizon and behind Thorin’s back, the great statue of her foremother casted a long shadow that fell over them both. Thrain’s key was now in her hand and she kept twisting it around in her fingers, over and over again. She was petrified, Bilbo understood – not of Smaug – but something else entirely. Thorin had explained to her the reason behind the jewel’s importance, but now, Bilbo couldn’t help but to question whether she truly trusted that oath, or if she secretly feared that even if she managed to return with the Arkenstone in tow, the leaders of the Seven Armies would still refuse to follow her - a cursed daughter from an equally cursed family, with a wooden shield in hand like a child’s toy and not a crown in sight.

Here, at the threshold of success, Thorin’s worst enemy was the same dread that had followed her this whole journey, voiced again and again in the taunting whispers of others.

So when only some time later Smaug cracked open one, golden eye, it wasn’t her own doom that Bilbo saw reflected in it, but Thorin’s.

Still, Bilbo hadn’t expected the worrying change to occur just that fast; in one moment, Thorin was focused on making sure Smaug would be perished from the halls of Erebor for good; the next, she was so utterly fixated on the treasure that Bilbo had to wonder whether she would start sprouting scales of her own. She now knew exactly how Yavanna had felt, the day she discovered that she had married the most troublesome oaf there was.

Bilbo was more than aware how it was just the matter of time before Thorin would start asking after the Arkenstone. And what was her elegant solution? To hide in Erebor’s wine cellar with Nori, because apparently at time likes these, the only honor still available for her could be found among like-minded thieves.

Here’s the thing: having a bit of a drink in her had the unfortunate habit of making her chatty, and often morosely so. As Nori was now filling their tankards for the third time, Bilbo tried to listen to that faint sound of reason at the back of her head, which kept repeating how ill-advised it would be for her to spill the beans. Just because Nori was the self-proclaimed skirt chaser of the Company, it didn’t mean that he had any insight whatsoever when it came to helping her in the current situation.

And – she reminded herself firmly - even if at some point in the future she was to approach the topic, she should do so by being as vague as she could muster.

“Are we married?” Bilbo blurted. “Not us, obviously, but Thorin and I. Because I remember signing a contract that in all intents and purposes makes us legal partners until death do us apart – the same contract, I might add, which promises _me,_ or – in the case of my early and violent demise – a relative of my choicea ridiculous amount gold from _her_ family fortune, something that in my part of the world could easily be seen as giving dowry. And then I pledged both myself and my sword to her, and she in turn put a flower in my hair, and I don’t know how dwarves go about with it, but with hobbits there’s this thing about exchanging wows and flowers and – _please stop laughing,_ do you think this is funny?!”

“Oh, this’s priceless, that’s what it is,” Nori hiccupped, wiping away both tears of laughter as well as the blotches of ale he had accidentally sloshed on his shirtfront. “I wish _I_ could get paid as handsomely as you for wooing the Queen once everyone’s had their backs turned…”

Bilbo elbowed him in the ribs, embarrassed but not really annoyed; she had heard too many of Nori’s own amorous adventures for that, shared freely over the countless campfires. Granted, none of those had included pursuing sullen royalties, but Bilbo wasn’t going the get caught in the details here. They were - as Nori was so very fond of saying - as thick as thieves now.

 “Maybe I should give her the Ring,” Bilbo mumbled absently, resting her chin against the pint’s edge. After speaking it out loud, she wasn’t entirely sure why such a splendid idea hadn’t occurred to her sooner. Surely Thorin was more suitable for carrying a grand thing like that than she was. And who knows, maybe it would make her more amiable to the idea losing the Arkenstone for good. A heart for a ring – wasn’t that how these kinds of things usually worked?

Nori at least seemed to think so. “Ah, see, now you’re starting to think like a dwarf!” he assured. “A piece of fine jewelry’s always a good way to catch one’s eye. Some folk who like to think themselves proper might say a ring’s a bit forward, but as they saying goes: if the boot fits, wear it.”

“I’ve never own a shoe of any kind in my life,” Bilbo grumbled, leaving the misinterpretation to be, since she wasn’t really feeling up to explaining herself.  She actually wasn’t feeling all that well in general - it was as if the idea of giving away the ring had somehow managed to make her aware just how in her cups she truly was.

She might have gone a little green in the face, since Nori chose that moment to pinch her cheek affectionately. “Look, luv, I’m not against spinning yarn about _fated meetings_ or of the sorts, it makes most lasses’ go weak in the knees, but when it comes to you and Thorin…” Nori shook his head, making Bilbo’s already spinning head ever dizzier as she watched his braids swing. “I know the gold’s got her all gobsmacked, but it definitely isn’t the only thing she’s been ogling. You deserve her heart and that’s the truth of it. And you know what we thieves do when think we deserve something?”

Bilbo huffed, but couldn’t stop herself from cracking a weak smirk. “Do tell?”

“We go and we take it,” Nori said, winking at her.

 

* * *

 

In hindsight, Bilbo mused as she stood shaking (from coiled rage or the freezing wind, she wasn’t sure) on the battlement above Erebor’s gate, she could now see how it wasn’t her greatest decision yet to take advice in the matters of the heart from someone who was in habit of breaking them.

Though in Nori’s favor it should be said, that when he had advised her to steal Thorin’s heart, he most likely had more figurative means in mind.

All blood had been drained from Thorin’s face, as she now stared down at Bilbo, eyes alight with unfamiliar feverish gleam. “I sent you to find my heart – the heart of the Mountain. You promised me,” she whispered, her tone half pleading, half horrid. “And now I find it in the hands of my enemies.”

“ _No_ , I promised to keep it away from the claws of the dragon! And now the beast is dead, yet it seems the sickness it spread lives on. I would rather see your heart safe from it, even if it means giving it away!” Bilbo screamed. By now, both of her cheeks were wet with angry tears, of which she refused to wipe away purely out of spite; if anyone were to think her weak for it, then let it be so.

During her time with the Company, Bilbo had learned that in addition to Khuzdul, dwarves also had a second language that consistent solely of hand signals. Most of the time it was used to give out warnings, but in some cases, it seemed to convey more effectively what words failed to tell; more precisely, insults. 

It was inevitable that she should pick up some pointers.

So - under the shocked eyes of the rest of the group - Bilbo gave Thorin the finger.

And then she slipped her ring on that solid finger - and vanished.

 

* * *

 

Months on the road with a group of dwarves, about to reclaim a once-lost dwarven kingdom, and still, during her last moments, Bilbo still managed to found herself in the company of no other than _elves_. By now, she considered herself dwarf enough in nature to be deeply irked by such irony. Her only source of comfort was how many of the elves – based on their distasteful expressions - seemed to think she actually was one. Or maybe it was pure self-preservation, since the last elf who had tried to persuade her to relocate, nearly coddling at her as he did ( _“This is no place for a lady!”),_ had made a hasty retreat as Bilbo’s only reaction had been kindly to tell him to, “piss off”.

As of now Bilbo was perched on a small rock on where she had been sitting ever since Gandalf left her there, watching as a colony of elves flocked around their king like a fleet of seagulls. In truth, their movements were as graceful as ever, but Bilbo was too peeved to give them such credit. Instead, she merely followed, eyes dull, as Thranduil lifted his hand in a lazy motion that to Bilbo seemed like he was about to shoo his subjects away, but what was most likely meant as a heartfelt greeting. With elves, it was impossible to tell.

“My lord,” said one of the elves, identically impeccable as the four others next to him, “if we don’t retreat now, we risk being overrun by the orcs.”

“Then let it be so.” With a distasteful air, Thranduil angled his head to look over the embankment to where the front gate of Erebor stood, something akin to sneer grazing his lips. “I wonder if the newly appointed Queen intents to hide among the gold until the whole side of the Mountain runs red with our blood.”

So _now_ he was willing to call Thorin by her title. Bilbo was seriously considering if being the shield-maiden of Erebor made her obligated to smack the Elven King in the face with her tobacco pouch, or if being publically disgraced by the Queen herself stripped her from that right, when one of the other elves stepped forward.

“King Thranduil, if I may.” The one now speaking was the Captain whose hair bore the color of autumn leaves; perhaps Bilbo simply liked to imagine it, but her otherwise polite voice seemed to carry a slightly offended undertone. “Thorin Oakenshield has been on the battlefield ever since the fighting first began.”

At her words, Bilbo felt something unfurl beneath her chest. The feeling was much the same as when some weeks ago she had found herself staring down from a burning tree, realizing that her intervention was the only thing standing in the way of Thorin losing her head.

If Thorin was willing to cease from her coin-counting in order to march out of the Mountain to fight, that could only mean one thing: that there was, in fact, something left of her to be saved. She might currently be as mad as a badger, but she was, in all intents and purposes, still the same Thorin Bilbo had made that pledge to.

Bilbo didn’t have to stop to second-guess herself: she sprung up to her feet like a released spring, the ring already on her finger and disappearing out of sight before the elves had the time to realize she was gone.

 


	5. Chapter 5

 “What’s this?”

 “A mourning gown,” the woman explained slowly, looking at her with an expression that clearly told Bilbo how she wasn’t entirely convinced that she still had all her spoons in the same cupboard. And then even more stiffly, “My daughter wore it when she was still growing in height as well as around the chest.”

Bilbo pinched her eyes momentarily shut and resisted the urge to let out an animalistic scream. An entire city in ruins, hundreds dead, and somehow this stranger still made the effort to mock her for her lack of curves. She had to wonder whether even before Smaug’s rotting corpse there had been something in the Lake-town’s water that made its inhabitants into insufferable snobs. “No, the ‘what’ part was quite clear, thank you. What I meant to ask was _why_ would I need such a thing?”

Men, she thought wearily to herself, had such depressing customs. Not only did they seem to have an unthinkable number of slurs reserved for women, but now this.

Bilbo couldn’t remember a single time when she had dressed completely in black; she had buried her father wearing yellow and, nine years later, her mother in lilac, and many older relatives and the occasional ill-fated younger cousin in all the other colors imaginable, only never black. She would go as far as to swear that if she were to take the gown now, it would be the first of its kind in her wardrobe. She wondered if it also came with a veil; she had seen the locals with their faces hidden behind dark lace, features rendered obscure as if grief was something to be ashamed of.

Although she couldn’t be sure, Bilbo was ready to believe that like hobbits, dwarves didn’t feel the need to mask such things.

The woman clicked her tongue unhappily, while indicating towards her own dark attire. “Our duty is to honor the dead.” She kept pushing the dress in Bilbo’s direction. “One should think that as a woman of the court, you would feel obliged to wear black at times like these.”

Life tended to be ironic when it came to little things like this; even if she had once worried how to dress on the day Thorin reclaimed her throne, it now appeared to be decided beforehand what she should wear when she buried her.

It took her a moment before she thought to state the obvious. “But Thorin isn’t dead.”

The woman casted a pitiful glance at Bilbo, as her answer, the unspoken _‘yet’_ hung heavy in the air. This time she seemed to have reached the end of her patience, as she all but shoved the garment into her hands.

Bilbo had to wonder on exactly what bases she was to imply that she was a ‘woman of the court’, because there she was: standing in the middle of the blood-spattered tundra with her bare feet frozen to a point of complete numbness, while the icy wind pulled at her matted hair. Her torn coat was of little use against the breeze, all its button now missing, and her choice to wear trousers (no matter how dwarven-made they were) appeared to be as unheard of as it had been in the Shire.

The thing that actually shielded her from the weather was her _mithril_ armor, which had stayed as immaculate as it had been the moment she first put it on. It shined so bright in the midst of all the bleakness that looking at it directly made Bilbo’s eyes sting. Perhaps she would never grow to wear it as easily as the others members of the Company did their armors, but - as Thorin had said upon giving it to her – it was in its own right unlike any other. As Bilbo held the dark gown against her chest she imagined covering it up, much like all those local women covered their faces, and actually shuttered.

She prepared to return the gown with no delicacy whatsoever, but as she looked up, she found the woman already gone. Huffing, Bilbo then balled the garment into a small bundle that could be fit under one arm and turned around to start her journey back to where she had been before the intrusion.

A makeshift-campsite of hastily raised tents stood before her, bracing against the foul weather as well as the surroundings, the hillside beneath her feet filled with slippery rocks. The ruins of Dale weren’t too far away, the once-abandoned streets now filled with the bodies of fallen warriors and some hopeful soldiers still in search of survivors. It was nearly dawn – a notion that was now impossible to escape, since all the elves had apparently taken it upon themselves to mutter something about a _“red sun rising”_ as ominously as they could muster, every time a person from the other races happened to be within earshot.

Her pushing aside the flap of the nearest tent revealed Fíli exactly where Bilbo had left here: she was sitting by Thorin’s bedside and only rose to her feet when Bilbo entered, her golden armor clanking hollowly as she did.

“What did she want?” she asked, brow furrowed in worry.

“To dress me like a crow, apparently.” Bilbo shook open the gown for her to see. “While implying that I’m both flat-chested as well as acting improper, just because I refuse to grieve before I have the actual need for it.”

Hearing this, Fíli’s usually so beatific face turned into something nearly vengeful. Bilbo was suddenly glad that in the moment Kíli was in the next tent getting an arrowhead removed from her shoulder, given how her self-control wasn’t as good as her sister’s and she might have actually acted upon her anger even when battle-worn, leaving them then in the awkward position to explain why exactly she had felt that her Aunt’s honor needed defending against a simple Lake-town seamstress.

Finally Fíli seemed to decide that her usual brand of wry humor was the way deal with this. “It almost makes me wish that those dresses you packed had survived the trip, so we could all wear them just to annoy her,” she said. “I think Dwalin really liked the blue one.”

Despite the expensive material, Fíli’s armor was worn and battered to a point where it hardly looked safe for her to be wearing it anymore. She had a black eye, a bleeding lip and both her sideburns as well as her golden hair were matted with clotted blood. Out of the three Durins, she had been the only one still standing when Bilbo had found them on the battlefield, and while she had looked quite shocked when Bilbo (whilst still invisible) had proceeded to slice one of Azog’s feet from under him, she had recovered quickly enough to pick up the Defiler’s fallen mace in order to swing it repeatedly against the orc’s face until nothing of it remained but red pulp.

At the time Kíli had been recoiling from just being shot; the arrow that pierced her shoulder wasn’t lethal, but the second one that had been aimed straight at her heart would have been, if it wasn’t for some lucky talisman – apparently a family relic - that she had been carrying in her breast pocket, a stone hard enough to bring the arrowhead to a dead stop.

As their commander went down, the rest of the orcs had miraculously stayed back: apparently one of them had gotten the idea that some greater force – a spell of dwarven origin - was now protecting the Line of Durin, much like it had done during the Battle of Moria. The orc in question had then proceeded to scream this piece of superstition to its comrades, until like-minded wariness stopped them from crossing the hillside long enough for sudden reinforcements to arrive to turn the tide of the battle in their favor. The Eagles had screeched and Beorn had cut down orcs like weeds, and in the general chaos that followed, Bilbo had deemed it safe enough to remove her ring unnoticed.

“A shame,” Bilbo mumbled, not really paying that much attention to her words anymore. On the bed behind Fíli’s back, Thorin lay as if she was sleeping, if it weren’t for the heavy dressings draped around her abdomen.

Back on the battlefield, Bilbo had nearly fainted on the spot when she had first seen the huge spear sticking out of her gut. It had required a manner of intense chanting from Gandalf to make the bleeding to stop, and even then there had been the internal damage to consider. When it had become apparent that Thorin would not survive the night if left on her own, Bilbo had marched over to the other side of the camp where Thranduil and his entourage were staying for the time being, and put her foot down. After all, both the elves and the men had already said that they owed her for the theft, so in the light of such promises her bargaining for the life of one dwarf didn’t seem that high of a price for them pay, and Bilbo most certainly wasn’t above begging when it came to Thorin’s life.

Even though it was Thranduil himself who was eventually forced to roll up his sleeves in order to get to work, Bilbo couldn’t be swayed from her decision. The way she saw it, she was already disgraced beyond redemption in Thorin’s eyes and could therefore humiliate her some more by making her the subject of the healing powers of her sworn enemy. She even dared to hope that one day – if she should live – Thorin would understand how, based on the pinched expression on his face, the Elven King was the humiliated one here.

The miraculous result of Thranduil’s work now resting before her eyes, Bilbo dared to ask, “How is she?”

Fíli shrugged helplessly. “No change. That’s good, right?”

Bilbo’s response was to be as uncertain, before she caught sight of the miserable look on Fíli’s face. Dwarves and their damned influence, she cursed; back in Hobbiton, the girls of Fíli’s age were busy fussing about getting new dresses for upcoming birthdays and  gossiping over local boys; as a successor to the throne of Erebor, Fíli was covered in blood and seemed to have bits of someone else’s entrails hanging from her hair. She now appeared to have inherited Thorin’s posture, too, even if Bilbo had no idea how she had managed that overnight. But every one of those hobbits would have immediately seen what had now taken her so long to understand – that right now, Fíli just looked like someone who could do with a firm hug and some false comfort.

“Absolutely,” Bilbo lied warmly, pulling her close and ignoring it when the armor made it rather awkward. She patted the part of her head she could reach, wondering faintly just when exactly she had become the old and wise-one here. “She will be alright, you’ll see.”

It took Fíli a moment to give in to the embrace, but as she finally did, Bilbo could feel her weight sagging against her like a stone. She mumbled some faint agreements against her shoulder, staying in the embrace perhaps a little longer than was expected of her. Bilbo politely didn’t call her out on some occasional sniffling.

When Fíli finally pulled away, her eyes were a little red, but her face now carried its familiar sternness. “Would you stay with her for a moment if I go check on Kíli?” she asked carefully, nodding in Thorin’s direction.

Once again, Bilbo was about to balk, since it didn’t seem all that proper for her to be sitting watch by the very person she had deceived. But the mention of Kíli’s name reminded her of the fact that in addition to losing her Aunt, Fíli had come close to being taken from her sister as well. “Sure,” she murmured, and witnessed Fíli’s grin lighting up like the rising sun.

Some moments later, Bilbo found herself sitting on the small stool by Thorin’s bed. It was just the two of them now, and for the first time since the moment she had been forced to leave Erebor behind, she felt the true magnitude of everything that had happened wash over her. Something cracked, and it definitely wasn’t the chair she was sitting on. After spending quite a while wiping away tears and snot alike, it became hard to understand just how she had managed to keep it bottled up to this point at all. She much preferred the hazy numbness, even if it made it seem like she was still walking around in that ring-induced mirage. At least that way she could have been sure her pain was invisible to everyone else; perhaps she had been wrong about her need for a veil after all.

“Why the tears, Bilbo? Or have you forgotten Balin’s tale?”

As Bilbo lifted her head in shock, she found that while Thorin’s eyes were still closed, her lashes a dark fan against snow-white skin, a slight smirk had appeared on her chapped lips. Her voice was nothing but a weak croak, but still managed to be coated with grim satisfaction. “I’m to be the Last – the Deathless,” she continued.

Despite her ambitious claim, she still looked to Bilbo like she was barely clinging to her life. As such, she wasn’t sure if Thorin was merely delirious from a possible fever, or if this actually was her idea of a terrible joke. In any case she didn’t care, as she all but tipped from her chair in her hurry to claps Thorin’s hand.

But just as she was about to do it, she thought better of it, and withdrew her hand.

“If you’re exactly like Durin, then I must have missed that part of the tale where she nearly got herself killed before she could be made queen,” Bilbo heard herself say, because apparently she couldn’t be trusted to keep to proper bedside manners even in a situation as dire as this one. “I think Thranduil has already assigned his best scribes to write your eulogy.”

Thorin groaned loudly, hopefully not entirely out of pain. Slowly, she cracked open one, bleary eye.  “Promise me that if I perish, only you will write songs of me, not some pointy-eared bastard,” she lamented.

By now, it was obvious that she recalled nothing of the violent happenings of before, otherwise she would surely have asked after her nieces. At loss for any other solution, Bilbo decided to play along with the charade a moment longer.  “And what about dwarves?” she inquired innocently, letting nothing about any manner of elven healing slip. “Are you expecting me to forbid your own people from doing it?”

“Most certainly. I didn’t go through all this trouble for Erebor to fall in ruins because its citizens are too busy composing to actually rebuild it…”

But as she spoke, Thorin’s eyelids were already slipping shut, sleep claiming her once more. To her relief Bilbo discovered that her breathing at least was now more stable and her lips were beginning to lose their unnatural blueness.

At the sight of it, Bilbo was brought back to the moment atop the Carrock and she remembered her own disarray of emotions, the crippling relief that had filled her when she saw that Gandalf’s healing had worked, and then the equally paralyzing feeling that had felt like another kind of fear entirely; the sudden knowledge that from this point on, her happiness was irreversibly woven together with this woman’s, who often dared to treat her life as if it was nothing more but an offering to the deities of old.

Now, the same applied as then, and for a moment Bilbo wanted nothing more than to get on her knees and bow her head in prayer, thanking those same greedy powers for allowing her to keep her still. At the same time, she wanted to curse them for giving her the urge to seek out adventures, only to find that everything she had craved for already existed in the form of one being.

But of course, as a simple hobbit she had never been taught to put her faith in any higher power, and had only been urged to trust the very things she could see, hear, taste or smell. And so Bilbo thought of Thorin in those terms instead; she thought of her face framed by the countless stars of the night sky above Hobbiton and recalled her voice singing, and remembered the taste of toast and honey on a sunny day, and the smell of birch in her hair – all of it in some vain attempt to capture the true spirit of the person she cared about, in order to tie it back to the body it belonged, turned so cold and alien by the resent events.

It took nearly an hour for Thorin to wake up for the second time. In the meantime Fíli wandered in and out, cast adrift between the two tents, while Bilbo cling onto the unconscious figure on bed like it had become her personal anchor on a stormy sea.

But finally, Thorin’s eyelids fluttered once more. When she finally opened them fully, they searched the tent’s ceiling confusedly, before they finally landed on Bilbo.

For a moment it seemed like all of her silly hopes had paid off, as recognition flashed in Thorin’s eyes. But then – like she was watching a nearing avalanche tumble down from the mountaintop – Bilbo saw them turn dark with memory. Thorin _knew_ , and the shock of it made Bilbo’s tongue turn to lid.

Neither of them seemed to find the necessary words. The silence stretched on, until Bilbo just couldn’t take it anymore. “I’ll go and fetch Fíli,” she said, before rising from her chair and hurrying out.

She could now see how this definitely wasn’t one of the foolish stories in her mother’s book collection, where true love bested all obstacles. In the brief exchange of words when Thorin had been too out of it to remember she had been given a small mercy, before the reality of it all weighed her down once more.

Maybe she wasn’t all that intent on cursing her as before, but from here on out this is what was left of them: Thorin detached and distant, and Bilbo, fighting to accept the fact that it had all been worth it, just to see her live.

 

* * *

 

 Her firm resolution to succumb to quiet despair and longing would have been all well and good, if after many days Bilbo hadn’t still found herself at the same campsite.

During that time she had been forced to re-visit the belief that there was no chance of Thorin ever forgiving her. There had even been times when she had been unsure if by dwarven standards she and Thorin simply had a mighty spat, or if disregarding the Queen’s order while she was obviously under the effect of some family curse was still equal to treason, despite the Queen in question now openly (if rather begrudgingly) admitting how she had acted like an idiot. Well, not in so many words, but Bilbo remained confident that they would get to that in time, since otherwise there had been no point in Thorin’s outright lie to her cousin Daín about the role Bilbo had played in happenings. As far as everyone else outside the Company was concerned, the decision to surrender the Arkenstone had been a mere mistake on Bilbo’s part and not the result of much planning and equal amounts of heartbreak.

Even on the bigger scheme of things everything was turning out alright. After the recent diplomatic catastrophe, it had been decided (probably by Balin and Gandalf) that a special committee was to be assigned to maintain the somewhat flammable relations between Erebor and Mirkwood. It consisted of both dwarves and elves that were very purposefully chosen from the younger generations and therefore less likely to harbor any age-old prejudices, with the sole task on making sure that the dwarves’ resettlement back into the Mountain should run as smoothly as possible.

Sadly, by some twist of fate, Glóin’s son Gimli – who had only recently arrived from the Blue Mountain with her mother – had ended up as one of the members. According to Kíli, now a proud leader of the said committee, it was clear that he shared his father’s pessimistic view of their neighbors.

“It’s not so bad, really,” Kíli assured Bilbo, ever the optimist. “Usually he and Legolas just end up shouting at each other, so the rest of us get loads done while they’re at it.”

Since everything around Bilbo was happening at such speed and in a manner of co-operation, it was easy for her to get lost in the illusion that it was all going to turn out fine. Bilbo did her best to forget that she hadn’t actually spoken to Thorin nor even seen but distant glimpses of her since that initial meeting right after the battle, and that everything she knew about her present mindset she had concluded from the things others had told her. She hadn’t been forbid to visit, but Thorin hadn’t exactly asked for her either, resulting in Bilbo to keeping her distance.

Still, despite her own discomfort, she had no reason to believe that Thorin wasn’t doing better: she and her remaining family were alive, the war was won and Erebor was back in the hands of its rightful ruler. Even if Thorin still had to stay at the campsite where the healers could reach her, it shouldn’t be too long until she could return back to the Mountain.

So when Bilbo happened to walk by the familiar tent and heard loud shouting inside, what she didn’t expect to find upon peaking her head inside was Thorin and Dwalin staring at each other challengingly, looking like they were only moments away from a full-blown fight.

 “Our queen has gone mad,” Dwalin snarled as Bilbo stepped inside and dared to express her wonder out loud. She refused to take her eyes off Thorin. “She’s thinking about giving up the throne!”

 _“What?!”_ Bilbo shrieked.

Someone had dragged a large chair by the bed and Thorin was now sitting – no, _slumped_ in it. Her hair was a dark, tangled mess and she looked nearly as pale as she had been the last time Bilbo saw her, and her eyes appeared empty, the familiar fire in them as extinguished as it had been in those cold forges of Erebor when they first came upon them. She was huddled deep under various blankets and robes, shrouded; _like the dead_ , Bilbo thought with a shiver.

 “To Fíli,” Thorin confirmed. Her voice sounded just as hollow as her eyes were vacant. “She has proven to be unaffected by the sickness. It was also by her hand that Azog fell, not mine.”

“She only managed it because you kept her alive long enough to do so!” Bilbo argued instantly, feeling her irritation spike up like the blue light of Sting’s blade.

The corner of Thorin’s eye twitched, but whatever the sudden feeling had been, it was gone before Bilbo knew it. “And by me, you mean Kíli?”

“You can’t honestly think –“

 But her voice was cut off, as Thorin suddenly slammed her palm against the chair hard enough to splinter the wood.

 “I won’t let Erebor fall under the rule of a weak queen!” she screamed. Her statue-like demeanor had finally cracked, and with a sudden clarity, Bilbo could see that she wasn’t just upset: she was possibly _livid_ with rage.

With clear effort, she pulled herself up from the chair, cradling her bandaged middle with one arm. “The men of Esgaroth now hail me as an unstable ally and _Mahal_ only knows what my own people think of me! I succumbed to the same sickness as my grandmother and waged a war that nearly cost the life of my nieces. Now my body is broken, and the only thing that brought me back from the brink of death was some unholy trick of equally greedy hands. Dying on that battlefield was the only redeemable act left and it was robbed from me!”

Before Bilbo could react in any way, Dwalin stepped forward and hit Thorin straight in the face.

It wasn’t anything one might call a girly slap, but a sharp punch that landed hard against her left cheek. She recoiled, but managed to stay on her feet. When Thorin turned her head back to glare at Dwalin, Bilbo could see an angry red scrape just below the eye where her knuckleduster had cut against the flesh.

In the heavy silence that fell, a trickle of blood – like a scarlet tear – ran down her cheek. Thorin didn’t bother wiping it away.

But in all intents and purposes, it was Dwalin who looked like she had been at the receiving end of that punch. She appeared to have shrunk in size, her intakes of air closer to ragged sobs of a scared little girl. “Your Majesty,” she managed, before she turned on her heel and marched out of the tent.

In her wake, Thorin’s rage retreated like storm clouds over a mountain range, and for a long moment, she stared after Dwalin without moving so much as a muscle. Finally, after what felt like ages, she finally lifted a hand to her cheek and had a look of mesmerized surprise on her face when it came back bloody.

While Thorin was lost in the sight of her own bloodied palm, Bilbo’s mind was playing over the words she had just spat up. Hearing all that, any sensible person would have been horrified. And Bilbo was, she really was – but at the same time, her body suddenly felt oddly weightless, as this twisted sort of relief raced to fill her veins. She felt as if she wanted to cry. But more than anything, she wanted to say something as improper as, _‘oh, there you are’_ , because for the longest of time, she had feared that this Thorin – Thorin who was ever oh-so-critical about anyone, but first and foremost about herself – was lost to her, buried under gold that failed to reflect any of her flaws.

“So may I ask what brought this on?” Bilbo finally dared to inquired, determined to aim for calm and collected. She already had an inkling, but at this point, it seemed better to be safe than sorry. “And exactly whose greedy hands you were referring to – mine or Thranduil’s?”

Thorin scowled at her, but Bilbo noticed how that look seemed to have a hint of shame in it. She tried to take comfort in the fact that at least the insult – if it were to be taken as such – wasn’t meant whole-heartedly.

There was a small basin by the bed and Thorin went to pour some water in it; the lit of the carafe rattle a little in the tune of her trembling hands. When she started to wash away the blood, she said, “Let me ask you something instead,” because of course Bilbo should have known better than to expect a straight answer from her. “You had the great Elven King in your debt, so why beg for my life?”

“Well what should I have asked, exactly - his son’s hand in marriage?” Bilbo shook her head. “What are you really asking me, Thorin? Because it seems to me that what you’re after isn’t the _why_ I did it, but why I still considered you worth doing it.”

Thorin actually stilled, in order to simply stare into the basin with unseeing eyes. She seemed to be addressing her own reflection as she said, her voice oddly strangled, “When her illness was at its worse, my father trusted my grandmother’s care into the hands of me and my sister, since he thought that only women could understand each other under such circumstances. I don’t want you to feel bound to that same fate.”

It took a moment for the true meaning of her words to register in Bilbo’s mind and when they did, they nearly knocked the air right out of her. Naturally it would be like this, she cursed silently; the day Thorin admitted that she would see Bilbo by her side in the future, that image was equally haunted by the age-old ghost of self-doubt. How was it even possible, she had to wonder, to wrap something so tender and yet so vile in the same confession?

“You think I’m staying out of obligation?” Bilbo asked.

“Out of misplaced loyalty!” Thorin snarled like a riled cat, abandoning her washing for good. “First you take away the Arkenstone to save me from my own madness, then defy the hand of death itself by haggling the very man we both loath! What’s next – are you planning on giving me the skin from your back, to replace my tarnished one?”

“Do you actually listen to yourself?! Because those are about as bad examples of my loyalty as it gets!” she shouted right back. “First I steal from you, then I fail to fight at your side for most of the battle, and lastly, _elves_. You don’t get to blame yourself solely on this!”

Thorin fixed her with a look that was almost repugnant in its arrogance. Bilbo had long since grown to hate that expression, because it always meant that Thorin considered herself superior in something, even if in this case it meant owning something no one in their right mind should have wanted to have. “The last I checked, it wasn’t you who failed to fulfill your fate.”

And that was when Bilbo moved on from admiring Dwalin’s boldness into respecting her patience; she had, after all, lived with this absolute poppycock for countless decades.

 “Fate?” Bilbo hissed, smiling a sweet smile that made her grind her teeth. “Sure, let’s talk about that. Because as I recall, you’re said to be Durin’s reincarnation and Durin _built a kingdom!_ Obviously I’m no dwarf, but I thought that was the remarkable thing about her. Have you considered how re _building_ Erebor might also be worth your time and not just reclaiming it? Who will protect these lands if the orcs rally their forces again? Or some other beast gets it into its head to terrorize the neighborhood?” _Or when this thing inside my pocket drives me batty,_ she almost said, but held her tongue. “The way I see it, Thorin, your people could do with a decent ruler and not just a martyr. So I suggest you stop the royal pity party and get on with it!”

And for the second time in her life, she walked out on her.

Bilbo had barely made it outside, when she could already tell that her knees were about to buckle. Luckily someone had placed a small bench by the tent and she wobbled over to sit on it. Once there, it felt perfectly natural to put her face in her hands and contemplate all the possible ways she could have handled the previous conversation better; indeed, nothing said ‘I deeply care about you and I hate to see you like this’ like telling someone that you considered their whole existence a failure.

Perhaps if she asked nicely, Thranduil might still take her for a handmaiden. It would serve her right to spend the next decades scrubbing his countless capes clean and pretend to be laughing at his jokes.

They were probably all about dwarves anyway.

 

* * *

 

The next day Bilbo ran into Dwalin in the mess tent. “Oh, good,” Bilbo greeted her, “I was afraid she might murder at least one of us in your sleep.”

The day was turning out to be nearly as bleak as the one before it. Bilbo had barely slept a wink, being constantly haunted by nightmares in which Thorin gave up the crown – to whom, exactly, had varied greatly from dream to dream. After the latest development where it was, in fact, Thranduil who got crowned Queen Under the Mountain with golden twig-tiaras and everything, Bilbo had decided it was time she got up and headed out in search of breakfast.

Dwalin at least appeared as her usual unfazed self. Still, it was instantly clear to Bilbo that what had taken place yesterday was now accounted among the things that they were never to speak of, right after the flustered way Ori behaved in her company and the way she allowed it. As Dwalin piled some food on her plate, she simply said, “Nah, you can rest easy. I don’t believe Thorin’s ever even heard of stealth. ”

Bilbo opened her mouth to argue – and then a series of images flashed before her mind, all of them of Thorin in the act of throwing herself head-on into the jaws of death. “A fair point,” she admitted.

As it happens, all the other dwarves seemed to have eaten already or were otherwise engaged. They managed to find a couple of free seats between Bard’s soldiers and sat down to eat, ignoring all the curious and some appalled looks casted in their direction (honestly, Bilbo thought, it was just _hair_ for _Mahal_ ’s sake!). Or maybe it was her generous plateful the men were looking at, as if they had never seen a hobbit, let alone a female one, come face to face with actual food after weeks of wandering with an empty stomach. Their horrified faces rather reminded her of her own, that time in her kitchen when she and Dwalin had first shared a meal - in the most literal sense of the word, no less.

Dwalin shrugged. “Have never been much for sneaking ‘round myself. Hands like shovels, my mother always used to say – no good for embroidery or any of those fine things Balin dabbled with. The first time I held a weapon I realized they were good for something after all.” She reached to scratch her jaw with the end of her spoon, eyes thoughtful. “They first made me and Thorin train together ‘cause she favored swords and was rubbish with an axe. Well, she wasn’t exactly bad – she just needed someone to tell her to take it down a notch. She’d have ruined that arm of hers before her forties if it wasn’t for me.”

It still sometimes managed to take Bilbo by surprise, this simple admission that even the youngest of the dwarves had lived almost twice as long as she had and some of them had known each other for just as long. As she got started on her porridge, Bilbo tried to imagine Dwalin and Thorin as they must have been back then, young and even more stubborn as they were now, almost bursting with the need to prove their worthiness. She guessed there had been quite a lot of pressure on Thorin because of her position and she if anyone was definitely prone to overachieving, even if it had meant driving her body to a point of no return. It must have really riled her up to be told by someone that patience was the key to success, and for that someone to be Dwalin who wasn’t an epitome of patience herself… Well, all in all it was fair to assume that the two of them might have not got started on the right foot, even if you couldn’t have guessed it when looking at them now. Yesterday’s act notwithstanding, Dwalin’s loyalty to Thorin was as unyielding as the Mountain itself, up to a point where she apparently saw it fit to defend her honor even from Thorin herself.

As if Dwalin was somehow reading her thoughts, the next thing that came out of her mouth was, “Has Thorin ever told you that when we were young, she used to get the most ridiculous suitors?”

Bilbo nearly toppled off her chain over the shock of hearing her mentioning such words as ‘Thorin’ and ‘suitors’ in the same context. Praying that her voice wouldn’t come out as a squeak, she stammered, “Is that so?”

Dwalin nodded. “I remember one chap who thought he could win her over by actually _winning_ her.”

“In a fight, you mean?” Dwalin nodded again and despite her surprise Bilbo snorted a laugh. Even at the very start of their journey, she had been wise enough not to try that trick, and not once had it occurred to her since, not even in the midst of a drunken haze. “And was there anything left of him afterwards?”

“Aye, he got to keep all his limbs alright. Couldn’t say the same about his pride…”

Bilbo chuckled and even Dwalin’s sharp grin relaxed into a genuine smile. After that they kept on eating in comfortable silence, both of them lost in the sea of sounds around them, a calming chorus of spoons scraping against plates and chairs legs scraping against ground. There was a lulling normality to be found in something so trivial that she welcomed it eagerly; little by little, Bilbo thought, life found a way in.

Just as they were about to finish, Dwalin cleared her throat. She sought out Bilbo’s gaze once more, her stare fixing her on the spot. “I heard what you said in the tent yesterday”, she said.

A simple “oh,” was all Bilbo managed, as an icy anticipation fell over her at once. Distantly, she wondered if the men around them should prepare themselves for another shocking display of impropriety – or, in so many words: Dwalin knocking her lights out with a single punch.

But instead of delivering any blows, Dwalin merely picked up her own plate, and then leaned over the table to do the same to hers. As she did, she said, her voice audible enough for only the two of them to hear, “There will always be plenty of fools willing to throw themselves at Thorin’s feet. What she needs is someone who doesn’t.”

With that, she set out to carrying the pair of plates to the washers, leaving Bilbo gawking after her.

 

* * *

 

Despite Dwalin’s ambiguous claim, it was still as unclear to Bilbo as ever where she and Thorin stood with each other. Funnily enough, that same uncertainty also applied when it came to Thorin’s rocky relationship with her other mistress – the Mountain. In an attempt to seek like-minded solace, Bilbo decided to leave the camp and relocate there instead.

In regards to her current situation Erebor was forgiving, being itself a city cast adrift between the past and the present, and perhaps even between worlds. Smaug had been death incarnate and in its wake the halls were filled with burned corpses and inanimate gold scattered about, and that same dull quietness that resided inside the Mountain had also claimed the lands around it.  But ever so slowly, signs of life were beginning to appear, and every passing day, the city seemed a little less bleak. Daín had left a good number of his soldiers to help with both the rebuild and the clean-up alike, both tasks in which Bilbo soon discovered herself to be as useful as a wheel with corners. Any attempt of hers to lift anything heavier than soup kettle was bound to end up in being crushed under it, and even if she did manage to pick something up, she didn’t have the faintest idea where to put it. Then there was, of course, the incident where Glóin had been with her when they ventured to examine one of the lower-level halls that had become flooded and she – when faced with all that water - had jokingly suggested that they should try to skip stones with a handful of sapphires. After that, even Glóin was quick to take back the request that she should assist his given team in sorting out the treasure.

In the past Bilbo might have accepted her defeat and let it wear her down. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time the constant disapproval of her peers managed to make her life unbearable. But after all the harsh accusations she had thrown against Thorin’s face it would have been more than a little hypocritical of her to just give up so easily, and besides, by now she knew better than to assume that what was called for in this situation was yet another dwarf.

So she found herself doing what a hobbit would. After spending the day mending walls, laying the dead to rest or whatever it was that getting the city back on its feet demanded of them, the dwarves would all gather for dinner, and as they did, Bilbo did her best to brighten their mood. She taught them songs she had learned during countless nights spent in the Green Dragon and then asked to be taught in return. She snuck to feed carrots to the rams at the stables with Kíli, and listened her teachings about dwarven customs; the hidden meanings of braids and clothes and even weapons. One day, after coming across a bucketful of conkers in one of the kitchens, she first taught Bofur how to play, and before she even knew it, had made it into a habit of organizing tournaments at the soldiers’ quarters.

But the majority of her time she told the unfamiliar dwarves stories about the journey that had led them there, mostly focusing on her own plunders and the many ways her company had managed to save her from them, Thorin especially.

By now, Bilbo was sure that if she were ever to return to the Shire, she would be met with quite the uproar. It didn’t matter how many heroics she had supposedly performed whilst abroad, because she knew precisely what details were bound to catch everyone’s attention: that she was last seen in the company of unknown bearded persons (for most hobbits that translated as men) until months later, she would be sneaking back home, filthy rich and looking ragged.

Most hobbit-folk were pure in heart as well as in mind, but there were still those, like Bilbo’s _dear_ Aunt Lobelia, whose poisonous tongue certainly wasn’t above vulgarities when it came to sorting out the bad apples from the bunch – and the more publicly the better. If she were to return, simply getting referred as the ‘odd spinster up the Hill’ would be a rare luxury, in opposed to the more common ‘damaged goods’.

Bilbo was hardly an expert, but it seemed like she ought to be more worried about the idea of being practically homeless than she actually was. In her old life she had sometimes entertained the idea of simply disappearing during the cover of the night and settling somewhere entirely else, but those had been vague plans made for the twilight of her life, a sort of last hurrah before the great inevitable. But then Bag End got invaded by dwarves, and everything that had happened since then had only proven what she had long since known in her heart of hearts: that she wasn’t cut out for a traditional life in the Shire. It now seemed reasonable to believe that maybe she had been so eager to help the dwarves to reclaim their lost home, because ever since she could remember she had felt that same sense of rootlessness, threatened to drive her mad if not fixed by some daring leap of faith into the unknown.

She had been in self-imposed exile for as long as she could remember; there was simply no going back.

“But what happens to her then?”

Some of Dain’s men had brought their families with them, so – to give their parents a moment of hard-earned rest – she had taken to entertaining the children as well. Even if Bilbo’s first impression had been to assume that dwarves were much more solemn and precocious bunch, she was soon to discover that apparently no child was immune to what was either a good story or a game of tag, even if the latter had the habit of resulting in a greater number of bloody knees than it had done with hobbits of their age.

This time though, it was the former, and she had a group of children sitting at her feet in a half-circle, listening avidly. After many days of telling, she had finally reached the part of the tale where the dragon was dead and the war won – both victories that in her version had happened with much less bloodshed, given that members of her audience were still yet to reach their tenth birthday despite the peach fuzz already covering their rosy cheeks.

“Well, obviously Thorin gets crowned as Queen,” Bilbo answered sensibly. In truth, the actual crowning ceremony was yet to happen, but she wasn’t opposed to cutting some corners when it came to good storytelling.

The little boy who had asked the previous question shook his head violently, making his tiny braided sideburns beat against his cheeks. “Not her,” he whined insistently, “ _the Burglar_. Does she become a princess?”

Her sister was sitting next to him and she didn’t waste any time in whacking him on the head. “Fíli and Kíli are the princesses, stupid!” she snapped. Bilbo was pretty sure her name was Unn - she was currently suffering through of getting her permanent teeth and the results were as expected; yesterday she had left some of the milk ones behind and his brother still had the imprints on his arm to prove it. Come to think of it, she rather reminded Bilbo of Dwalin.

“She doesn’t go back home, does she?” asked the boy sitting on Bilbo’s knee. Judging by his horrified tone, he might have been talking about some unimaginable cruelty. “She hates it there – they don’t let her do anything fun!”

 “Maybe she kills more dragons!” Unn beamed.

“Or goes on to another adventure?”

Now faced with a chorus of demanding voices, Bilbo could see that she might not have been as successful as she had previously imagined in her attempt to belittle her own part in the happenings. It certainly spoke volumes of her own indecisiveness that she was yet to decide which of them had got it right, even if deep down, she knew how the real decision wasn’t entirely hers to make.

Luckily, the sight of Balin appearing at the doorway saved her from choosing. “I guess you just have to wait and see, don’t you?” she hurried to say. “I promise to tell the rest of it tomorrow.”

A chorus of disappointed “ _nooo_ ”s echoed around her, but after some persuasion, the children eventually agreed to return to their parents. They dragged their tiny booted feet to the door, scuffling and knocking each other with bony elbows as they did.

Balin watched them leave with a soft smile on his face. “It seems, my dear, that you have made yourself quite the character around here,” he told her. “Did you know that some of the bairns seem to have gotten it to their heads that you’re as powerful as Gandalf?”

Bilbo couldn’t quite hide her wince. It seemed that her captivating storytelling notwithstanding, the children had been pry to more of her skills than she would care for; or, in so many words - her dire need to avoid Thorin at all costs, even if it meant slipping on her ring whenever she turned a corner and discovered being in danger of running into her.

It had been a week since Thorin was allowed back into the Mountain by her caretakers and during that time, Bilbo had spoken to her not once – not an impossible task, considering the sheer size of the place. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was hiding from, exactly: from Thorin, or from the possibility that it was by her obscure blessing that she was allowed to stay in Erebor – a blessing she could withdraw at any given time if she chose to.

It had occurred to Bilbo some while ago that her habit of retelling the story of their shared travels was done in the illusive hopes, that by so miracle, she could rewind time itself. A part of her kept wishing that if she told it just right, this time the story would end differently – that _they_ would end differently, and she would finally know what became of her indecisive heroine.

“I’m a burglar, Balin,” she thought to state the obvious, “not a wizard.”

As he came to sit beside her, Balin simply gave her a long look. After the disappearing act she had pulled right in front of everyone, it was little pointless of her trying to assure that she was just quick on her feet. So far, Bilbo’s only salvation had been the simple fact that dwarves – or anyone else for that matter – didn’t know a first thing about hobbits, so for all they knew, every member of her species might be walking around with a handy magical trinket in their pockets. Perhaps they assumed that that had been the very reason why Gandalf had chosen her for the task in the first place.

“Regardless, they even have a name for you.” Balin then proceeded to say something in Khuzdul, which left Bilbo blinking confusedly. “Roughly translated it means ‘Daughter of the Kindly West’.”

“Oh, but that’s lovely!” Bilbo laughed, relieved. “I was worried that it might be something like ‘Vagabond’ or ‘Doesn’t she have a home she could go to?’.”

 Balin frowned at her, his bushy white brows ascending over his eyes like a pair of tiny, judgmental clouds. “Have you forgotten how you’re surrounded by people who were driven to exile? There’s not a soul present who would wish you kick you out as long as you want you stay – Thorin the least.”

“Not even when she finds out that I seem to have become the local legend instead of her?”

The words had been her poor attempt to lift the mood, or perhaps to steer the conversation away from the dangerous waters it had been nearing to, but Balin didn’t took the bait. If anything, he appeared even more concerned as he said, “To be frank, I think she’s had more than enough of that. It might even be one of the reasons why things fell as off course as they did, but I suppose you if anyone know it.”

But that was the thing - she really didn’t. Shaking her head, Bilbo stammered, “I...”

Balin watched her with his head cocked to a side, evaluating her for some purpose of his own. Unlike the time he had first told her of Durin and the Five Queens, his behavior was now oddly reserved. Bilbo caught the impression that some part of him regretted telling her as much, or maybe even entrusting the tale himself in the first place – not because he didn’t believed it to be true, but for all the harmful things it implied. And true enough; “Thorin represents different things to different people, always has. Hope and courage to some, freedom –“ here, he gave Bilbo a significant look – “to others. I imagine it can be a heavy burden to bear – to feel that one’s value depends solely on your ability to exceed the expectations placed upon you.”

At first, this statement felt ludicrous, as Bilbo felt that she if anyone had made it perfectly clear that she had followed _Thorin_ , not Durin, to this outcome. She had, in fact, made her opinion so unmistakable known, that Thorin hadn’t found any reason to speak to her ever since. But as Bilbo’s mind now began to re-spin the contents of their last conversation around in her head, a bleak dread filled her guts. _“The last I checked, it wasn’t you who failed to fulfill your fate,”_ Thorin had said, and at the time, Bilbo had assumed that it was the Last speaking, Thorin the Deathless, up on her high horse as always. And maybe it was mostly about that, but right now, Bilbo couldn’t help but to feel that it had been partly about them as well.

It suddenly made all the sense in the world why Thorin had been afraid that she was staying out of some sense of obligation or duty. In a way, it went back as far as the day at Beorn’s, when she had been annoyed – no, Bilbo corrected herself, _horrified_ by the idea that she had casted aside the prospect of married life and decided to follow her instead, after coming to the conclusion that she with her impossible quest embodied a possible escape from it. Maybe Thorin actually believed that Bilbo’s admiration and thus, her affections, were meant for the things she represented to her, and now – as she no-longer saw herself as an embodiment of those values – she had no claim to her.

Letting out a miserable sigh, Bilbo shut her eyes and then reached to pinch the bridge of her nose. “She’s going to be the death of me, isn’t she?” she asked faintly.

When she finally opened her eyes, Balin met her gaze with a sympathetic twinkle in his own. “If it makes you feel any better,” he said, patting her on the arm, “I have been saying that same thing ever since she first learned to crawl.”

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

Thorin was running. Behind her back, the Lonely Mountain was erupting like a volcano; but in place of fiery lava, molten gold ran down its hillsides and battlements in great waves, engulfing everything in its path. It gave off heath, vile and deathly as a dragon’s breath, and the old scars on her back recoiled with memory as she made her way through the desolation.

There were others as well in the wilderness. Most of them were strangers, a blur of unknown faces from all races, but some she recognized as various members of the Company. As she gained on them, she was shouting for them to run, to save themselves from the impending death – but none of them moved. She was now close enough to see that all of them had their gazes fixed on the gold, eyes glassed in greedy stare that would not waver even as she tried shaking them or pulling them along. For all her attempts, all they did was open their arms wider.

It was then that she spotted Bilbo amongst them, her fair-toned curls glowing like a lit beacon in the unnatural dusk. Unlike everyone else, she had her eyes downcast and she was hunched over something she was holding in her hands, cupped between both palms. Thorin ran to her, but before she had time for any warnings, Bilbo lifted her face and looked straight into her eyes.

“It’s too heavy,” she complained. She seemed to be talking about the object she was holding in her hands, still shielded from Thorin’s view. “I can’t run with it.”

“Who gave it to you?” Out of all the possible questions, she wasn’t sure why she had picked that one; somehow, it seemed important to know who was to blame.

Bilbo’s unexpected smile was sorrowful thing. The gold was already so close that even though she had her back to it, Thorin could see it reflected in Bilbo’s eyes, making them bright and otherworldly as the sun, instead of the familiar green as the many fields of her home. She suddenly understood that after this those, too, would be forever lost.

Just as she felt the first wave of gold hit the back of her boots, Bilbo finally lifted her other hand to show her the thing she was holding. For a fleeting moment, Thorin expected to see the Arkenstone; but what Bilbo was holding was no jewel, but a still beating heart of flesh.

“You did,” she said.

Then, there was only gold.

 

Thorin came awake with a jolt. It took her a moment to understand that she was tucked away in her own bed at Erebor, and that her sheets were drenched in cold sweat instead of liquid metal.

She waited a long time for her heartbeat to settle. When it finally had, she threw aside the covers with a hiss, got dressed to her best ability and headed out of her rooms.

It was not the first time she found herself plagued by odd dreams: during those first years after her people had settled at the Blue Mountains, there had been many. First they came slowly, only a handful of images spread over a span of time, but as the years drew on and the memory of Erebor became something resembling a festering wound, the dreams, too, increased as if to poison her mind.

She could first feel the change during the month she fitted shoes for horses in a small village by the Greenway. She was almost stomped over so many times that she grew permanently unfazed by creatures many times her size and perfected an unsettling glare that was bound to work on both the animals as well as their boisterous owners, not taking too kindly for a woman doing what was largely considered a man’s work. It was there where she first dreamed of her father’s ring, the one that had been lost with him, and how in the dream it was placed on her hand – not by the famous elven smith - but some faceless figure draped in shadows. The same dream repeated countless times over a fortnight, but as she finally returned home, she decided not to mention it to anyone.

Weeks later, she took on work so far up in the north that even the constant proximity of the forge wasn’t enough to keep her warm; she slept curled beside it like a cat, chasing its lingering warmth during nights when the icy sky above was set ablaze by strange lights which served to remind her of moon runes. It was there she found herself dreaming again about the ring, only this time she wore it while standing by a great gate carved in stone, one she had not never seen but on the  pages of old books. It was as if the gate was only the beginning, since in the dreams that followed she came upon the legendary city of Khazad-dûm itself, and she spent countless nights wandering its endless, empty halls, before she was always pulled awake by the sound of drums in the deep.

In time the dreams only increased in number, but Thorin still kept them to herself, even from Dís, who had just lost her husband and the father of her children, and as such, had too many things on her mind already. But she remembered what had happened to Thrór and what had been said about the catching madness the women of her kin were prone to, making her think how dreaming of such great acts only seemed like a different kind of greed, since they were now as unreachable to her as Erebor’s riches.

It wasn’t until during a moment’s weakness when she confessed to Balin how she feared she was going mad, when he begged to voice a differing opinion. He reminded her of the stories she had once heard on her father’s knee, of Durin’s promise and the Five Queens that had been since. In his opinion, it wasn’t unheard of that their dreams might be linked to one another, so that fragments of their lives and rules could be passed on to her as a form of encouragement.

Thorin knew what to expect from him next; she might not be one to linger at their home in the stronghold, but she often traveled with the merchants who were unaware of her true heritage and prone to gossip. And, true to his form, Balin only hesitated for a moment before he admitted, “Ever since the battle of Azanulbizar, there has been talk that you’re to be the Last.” Perhaps he then caught a glimpse of her disbelieving look, as he was quick to add, “But of course, one can’t put too much weight on dreams alone.”

At first Thorin was almost angry; in her opinion, there were far better things to do than to engage in idly gossip when both food and money were still scarce. But the unavoidable truth of things was, that she also felt flattered by the rumors – how could she not, when the message they carried spoke of clear trust; a trust that she had never dared to have because of her gender, but a trust she had earned nevertheless. It made her remember how she had brought home with her the branch that had saved her life in battle and then forged it into a shield, so that at all times she could carry with her the evidence that the Line of Durin wouldn’t be so easily broken, and that she would extend her namesake’s protectiveness over her entire kin, shielding them from whatever blows the world decided to throw their way.

In that light, her dreams ceased to be a nuisance and became a responsibility instead.  If she truly was Durin’s given promise finally in the flesh, then it would mean that she could remember everything her people had been, as well as everything they yet aspired to become. It was her duty to set an example, in more ways than one. For all her childhood she had heard stories of the Seven First Dwarves, all linages blessed with great lords and kings – all except for her own. Durin and the Five Queen were a reason for great pride, but even on this day and age a woman’s right for rule needed constant defending against those who dared to question it. Should she reclaim the Mountain, Thorin would prove that the faith her kin had not been in vain.

Then, just as she had first intended to march out to meet the leaders of their armies and insist that they should take back Erebor, she lost Dís. It was a simple accident, as it appeared that her pony had stumbled and taken bad fall on one of the less used mountain paths, but for the longest of time, Thorin blamed herself. If she had only gone with her that day as she had asked, instead of coming up with pipedreams, she would still be with them. She even found herself thinking that perhaps the madness had found her after all and this was to be her punishment for it; to see her remaining family perish for her greed for glory.

She never mentioned any of her doubts to either of her nieces. Fíli was thirty-five, nearly of age, and Kíli not far behind, but in that moment of shared grief they turned to her in look for guidance, and she in turn found herself with children, if not hers by birth then at least by blood. She didn’t even know where to begin to unravel the meaning of it. Whereas she had nothing against children per se, her own thoughts about possible motherhood had withered and died long before Smaug arrived to Erebor, as she had come to the conclusion that she could never see herself as one. Dís, on the other hand, had always spoken in length how she wanted children, so in her naïve youth Thorin simply assumed that if she were ever to inherit the crown, she would name her sister’s offspring her heirs. That thought hadn’t wavered since, not even on the day when a simple blacksmith had arrived to Erebor and – once the winter was over – Dís had decided to take him for a husband, to the great horror of their entire royal family. When their parents had tried to talk her out of it, Dís had merely laughed; even now, Thorin remembered well how she had always been the braver of them two when it came to things that really mattered.

So she might not have wanted to become a parent, but fate didn’t leave her with the luxury of choice, and like in many matters before, she was left to do with what she had. She raised her nieces to be warriors, so they could fight back when the world would try to take everything from them as it was wont to do. She couldn’t bring back the parents they had lost, so she gave them knives and bows and something else to believe in, by sharing the same dream that had kept her moving through all those difficult years – that someday, Erebor could be theirs again – even if in truth, the actual dreams had long since ceased to appear. She saw the Queens and their dealings no more.

The new life they now had at the Blue Mountains was no longer a constant struggle and at times they even had the chance to indulge. Fíli and Kíli, born and bred west from the mountain range, had different standards for wealth and were at home in modest halls, but Thorin could still remember how it had felt to drink wine from cups made of pure gold, or weigh on her hand rubies the size of a grown man’s fist, and having the knowledge of those things made her spirit restless. She found herself thinking of Erebor once more, and of Durin, even if memories of both seemed to have deserted her for the time being.

But then she received word that her father had been seen wandering the lands near the town of Bree. She went searching and did endlessly so, until she was finally so exhausted in her futile search that she fell asleep while riding. In her dream, she was leading a group of survivals across lands – a memory from her time in exile that had haunted her for years. But then she came around a familiar hillside and was met with the sight of the Lonely Mountain, for what was – she understood upon seeing its pristine slopes and sides, untouched by any chisel or tool – the very first time.

So later, when _Tharkûn_ himself sat in her table at the local inn, her father’s key at hand, she had no need for further reassurances or omens.

Her time – the time of the Last - had finally come.

Only now, even if they had won back Erebor, she wasn’t so confident about that claim.

It had been a week since the healers had deemed her well enough to return to the Mountain. She had complied, if not exactly eagerly, then at least with a certain amount of relief. She had been fed up with the drafty tent and being endlessly prodded and poked by her caretakers, Bard’s people at her beck and call day and night despite her earlier behavior towards them. Even if being back at Erebor had its own downsides, at least she was no longer at the mercy of the very people she had doomed to a fiery death.

For the most part of the past seven days Thorin had stayed in her room, since Balin had insisted on it most rigorously. The Mountain certainly wasn’t going anywhere, he had said, and they could very well be expected to manage the beginnings of a simple cleanup without her direct supervision. She had obeyed his request to her best ability, but there were times when being left alone with her own thoughts drove her up the walls and that is when she took to walking the halls as she did now, attempting to familiarize herself in their shapes once more.

Most of her wanderings took her to those parts of the palace that had acted as her and Dís’s favorite hideouts, even if she only managed to discover a mere fraction of them, as if the very halls had rotated during her absence. But on this time she did come across Dís’s old room, where she found a pair of dolls, once made for them by their mother and which neither of them had never actually played with, but something Dís had kept nevertheless. They were both dressed in miniature versions of the traditional Ereborian _binda_ , their long dresses made of the same expensive fabrics as the real ones and embroidered with delicate, golden details. As Thorin picked up the nearest one, she recollected the heavy weight of her mother’s skirt and remembered thinking how crushing it must have felt for her to be wearing it at all times, cocooned in the suffocating embrace of the heavy silk and velvet. She had understood it even less when Dís, upon reaching her come-of-age, had made the rare decision to start dressing in one; it was generally known that once such a decision was made, it was a matter of pride to never back down from it. When she had questioned her about it, Dís had only said, _“The weight helps me to remember,”_ and Thorin still hadn’t understood her meaning, not until the day she picked up her wooden shield and everything she that came with it.

Now, just before continuing her journey, she brushed both of the dolls clean of dust and placed them carefully back on the shelf, watching as their wooden heads rested gently against each other for support.

Thorin recalled very little of those unfortunate days after Smaug’s banishment, but what she did remember was that the whole Mountain had sounded different then, its voice a series of dull and joyless clanks, or threatening hisses made by doors opening on their own. On her sickbed, she had feared that perhaps for all her stalling she had arrived too late, and now, even if she had survived, Erebor could only serve as her tomb; a city made for the dead.

But as she had been dreaming her restless dreams, a fresh breeze had made its way through the halls, and now, the very place seemed lighter for it, less ominous, and its habitants more prone to laughter and song as they worked to rebuilt it. Thorin had come across a full platoon of guards caught in a fierce match of conkers, heard her people singing odd songs and even saw one dwarf with her hair cut to a similar short shape, and she had known, then, who it was that had breathed life into her heart, not once, but twice.

It seemed that wherever she went, Bilbo’s influence could be seen, even if she herself was nowhere to be found. She walked the halls like a spirit, seemingly vanishing in thin air just mere moments before Thorin hoped to catch up with her. She followed the series of footprints she had left in the ash that still covered the floors, and watched how her own cape brushed them away in her wake, as if Bilbo had never been there at all. Thorin could not blame her for her behavior; they had not spoken to each other since that day in the tent, so in that regard it was easy to assume that Thorin’s mere presence was enough to make Bilbo fade away. The younger ones’ - oblivious to the poisonous words exchanged between them - seemed to believe her Gandalf’s equal for it, and at that she had to bite her tongue, for not arguing how in her mind the two had no grounds to be comparable; even for all their unresolved issues, she still considered even a lock of Bilbo’s hair to be worth more than the wizard and that damned stick of his combined.

She tried to remember the unexpected hope concealed in that admission, something entirely else than the familiar trust and loyalty of her dwarven supporters. For the thing she was now about to do, she needed all the courage she could muster.

Until now, Thorin had kept firmly away from the treasure at all times. She hadn’t dared to risk it for the sake of everyone involved, not when they all had sacrificed so much to spare her from her own stupidity. Bilbo’s scolding might have persuaded her to reconsider her decision to give up the throne, if not for her own sake then at least for Fíli’s, since forcing her into such a position without any preparation would have been pure cowardice on her part. But all that didn’t change the fact that the very Heart of the Mountain was now rotten, _her_ hearth, and as an extended proof of that there was the gold, spilling across caverns like a tumor.

Now, Thorin stood by it with her eyes firmly closed. She hardly even dared to breathe.

It was absurd; she had faced down orcs and goblins, beasts big and small, and even gloated at a dragon. She had defied death for the very thing she was now too afraid to even look at, in the fear that if she did, she would forever loose her ability to see beyond it.

Just then, from some distant hall far above, a peal of laughter carried into her ears. As far as reassurance went it was feeble at best, but it still managed to convoy a drop of hope. Thorin thought of the feel of Dís’s skirt in her fingers, the way she had carried it proudly across the many difficult miles from there to the west and never complained once; and she thought of the recent moment when the healers had delicately told her that the spear had apparently caused too much internal damage for her to ever conceive again, and how she had shocked them with her sudden bark of laughter, unable to put in to words how she already had all the daughters she could ever hope to have, even if she deserved neither of them.

And lastly, she thought of a southern wind blowing through Erebor’s halls, clearing out the ash, and then of conkers, hatching open and growing into great trees, making the desolation coming to life once more.

Focusing on all of that, she finally opened her eyes.

During the past week, Glóin had led a team that was in charge of cataloguing and sorting out the gold, a task that would take months if not years. In the meantime, the treasure was there for all eyes to see, and Thorin discovered now how witnessing it in all its glory hadn’t lost any of its appeal. She picked up a handful of coins and saw her image reflected back in a golden mirage, simply breathtaking in its beauty. She now wondered if it had always been so, even in her youth, and if it was only the shock of discovering the milky dullness in her grandmother’s once so intelligent eyes that had prevented her from seeing it like that.

But the remainder of Thrór pushed forth more memories, such as those not of her own, but the ones she had seen in her dreams. No one ever dared to remember the Queens as anything else but symbols for their rules, the women that had carried the crowns forever lost behind them. Now, for the first time ever, she found herself wondering whether any of them had ever second-guessed their place in the chain of great warriors that were meant to lead their people, or had any such doubts about their own importance as she did now. It was, after all, during their rule that something had managed to drive their people away from the halls of Khazad-dûm and made them settle into the Lonely Mountain, a place near the homestead of the dragons of the north – a great prize to pay even for all its contained wealth.

Perhaps Balin had been only partially right; perhaps these dreams of hers weren’t only remembrances of glory, but a collection of warnings in measures, provided as proof that every great deed brought with it the seeds for destruction. In their humble wisdom, her predecessors had put on offer their own mistakes, in the hopes that she should see that they, too, had erred, and were still today recognized as worthy by those that really mattered.

With this in mind, Thorin looked at the gold with new eyes. At the end of the day, it was just a pile of metal – cold coins and flimsy trinkets, shiny stones and empty tankards. It was a rebellious thought for a dwarf, but then maybe that was exactly what she was. After all, her life had been spared by a branch rather than any iron shield, and she had never loved any sword as much as she did of Orcrist, a blade of elven making.

And then there was, of course – Bilbo.

Her hand went slack, and she watched the coins scatter back into the pile were they lay with the others, seemingly harmless yet still as deathly as a coiled snake.

“Do you blame me for what happened?” she asked out loud.

Even without seeing him, she could sense that at some point Balin had made his way to her side. He still walked with the same gait as he had done all those years ago when he had come to comfort her after some royal exercise gone awry, and Thorin could recognize him for it even now. She kept her eyes on the gold, even if her question hang heavy in the air between them.

But as Balin replied, he did it without hesitation. “Never,” he said. “If anyone, I blame myself. I shouldn’t have let you come.”

His admission shocked Thorin. She twirled around, a motion that finally brought the two of them face to face. From Balin’s expression she could read only guilt, and it was then that she understood for the first time that Dwalin must have gone to him after their fight in the tent that day, confessing everything, even if later the two of them had simply carried on as if anything of out of the sorts hadn’t happened, nothing there to remind them of it but the scar she now carried on her cheek.

Before Thorin knew it, she had her hand raised in abrupt motion, as if to reach out to touch him. “Balin –“ she started, all in a rush, but halted just as quickly as her hand had done. “It wasn’t your choice to make,” she finally said, hoping that it carried out everything she couldn’t manage to put into words.

Balin simply nodded, his eyes filled with sadness. Not for the first time Thorin became aware of the whiteness of his hair and beard, and her gaze tracked down the deep lines of his face. There had been a great number less, back when she had first started to dream her dreams of old.

 “And that’s what I have been telling myself ‘till this day,” Balin answered. “But I think we both know how there is unique kind of pain in still remembering the very first time you held someone in your arms and then following that same someone into what can only be a certain death – and not once, but twice have I now done that.” Thorin now made a weak attempt to speak, but Balin shushed her. “No, I want you to hear me out on this one, lass. Because you are and have always been the rightful Queen to me, but – and I mean no disrespect to Thráin - I also like to think you as a daughter. Having to watch you perish on that battlefield would have broken my heart, just as I knew that staying at the Blue Mountains and casting aside all hope of reclaiming our true home would in time have broken yours. And that is why I convinced myself that you had to come - not because it was expected of you, but because after all the hardships, you if anyone deserved the chance to be truly happy.”

Distantly, Thorin was aware that something was now trickling into the midst of her sideburns, and it took her a moment to discover that she was, indeed, crying. She hadn’t been aware that she still had enough tears left in her for it; it now felt strangely comforting to know that there were certain things not Smaug, nor Azog, had managed to rob from her.

Carefully, like her skull was made of the brittle bones of a bird, Thorin stepped closer to press her forehead against Balin’s; the last time she remembered doing it, they had just sealed Dís inside the stone for all eternity. Into the gap between them, she whispered, “I have failed you.”

“You did no such thing!” Balin snapped, almost offended. “The war with the orcs was not your fault. If I recall correctly, your actions provided us with an army – many of them, in fact,” he assured. “And even if you had, it wouldn’t change my mind about a single thing I just said.”

“Even still. Forgive me,” she begged, the apology dragged out of her hoarse throat like a desperate prayer, each of the words setting something inside her free, “forgive me for everything.”

Balin reached out to cover her shaking hands with his own, much warmer and surer than hers had ever been. “Not that I’m not glad to hear it,” he answered, and in his voice, Thorin could hear the beginnings of a smile, “but I don’t think it’s me you should be apologizing to.”

 

* * *

 

Some days after, Thorin was convicted that if she were to stay indoors for a moment longer, she would go mad for entirely un-gold-related reasons. She had spent so many of her years constantly on the move, that she now felt like some feral animal trying to pass as a house pet as she prowled around the confines of her room, and - as she tossed and turned in her bed – nearly mourned the waste the soft beddings were on her back, as used as it was to being pressed against the hard ground while sleeping. For once, she thanked her late mother for all her dedication in drilling the royal manners into her think skull, since it spared the Ereborians from realizing that in addition to all her other faults, they also had a wild thing for a Queen.

In her desperation for a breath of fresh air, she finally managed to haggle one of Dain’s men to accompany her for the short trek that was the distance between the main gate and the nearby Ravenhill. Thorin knew she was in no shape to ride, but she didn’t wish to risk the walk in the fear that her strength might run out midway and she would be forced to be carried back in the soldier’s arms like some common damsel. Since Nori had reported to her that Esgaroth guarded its ponies with such a ferocity that even he was unable to purchase or steal some, they were left to do with what they had. And so Thorin watched, eyes uneasy, as the soldier saddled a pair of rams, the animals now nearly as anxious as she was for being cooped up in the stables for so long.

Still, they managed to reach Ravenhill without an incident. Once there, the soldier agreed to stay by the foot of it with the animals, while Thorin started her slow climb up the path.

The Ravenhill had been yet another of the secret places she and Dís had had the habit of coming when they wanted to be left by themselves. Whenever the pressing knowledge of their mother’s impending death or Thór’s flight of fancies had become too much, the pair of them had taken refuge at the hilltop, where a great ash tree stood in majestic solitude, its trunk wide enough that it would take four dwarves with their arms stretched out wide to circle it, its equally huge roots providing enough shelter for them to hide in.

To her immerse relief Thorin learned that the tree was still there, reaching its winter-skeletal branches towards the sky, peppered with black spots that turned out to be ravens huddling against the cold. As she started to make her way around the tree, Thorin nodded to them in greeting and saw them craning their heads in return, a mute sort of understanding transferring between them.

Her original reason for coming was to attempt to try if she could still find the runes she and Dís had once carved into the tree’s bark. Upon making the markings had contained both of their real dwarven names spelled in the old tongue – a clear violation of the secretive nature of their people, but something Dís had talked her into, saying that this way, even when they were gone, their names would live on in something else besides stone, on something that would continue to grow and green each spring for years to come.

Now it was still winter, and the snow was too deep and the roots too covered in ice for her to discover signs of any carvings. But what Thorin did come across was a set of footprints, fresh enough that they had been made mere moments ago; the tracks were far too light to be made by any boot, as if they belonged to someone who had been walking –

_“Oh.”_

It was most likely the barest of whispers, but in that moment a gush of wind travelled up the hillside and it carried the sound to her ears; Thorin felt her head perk up like a spooked dove’s, and she must have looked as if she had seen a ghost. On the other side of the tree, a little further away from the trunk, Bilbo stood staring back at her in equal surprise.

She was – as could have been gathered from the footprints – barefoot in the snow, despite it being thick enough for her to be in it up to her knees. On the lower branches of the tree Bilbo had a couple of ravens to keep her company, and with her straw-golden hair, her cut-off trousers and with the amount of layers of clothing she wore upon layers, she rather reminded Thorin of a scarecrow.

 It was that slightly hysterical image that finally broke the spell, and Thorin set out to meet her, trying her best to get over the shiver that had taken over her body, one that had nothing to do with the cold and everything with the meeting at hand.

As she drew closer, she half expected Bilbo to vanish between one blink and the next, as she had done countless times before, but to her amazement found her standing there in waiting, blinking lone snowflakes out of her lashes and puffing out clouds of frozen air, a delighted sort expression coloring her face. It would have been easy to assume that she had fully expected for them meet here, had indeed intended so, like any of the unspoken rules of their game of hide and seek didn’t apply once outside of Erebor’s walls. Thorin knew it was impossible for Bilbo to have known when she would come, as unplanned as this visit of hers was, but she decided to entertain the notion a while longer.

“I came to look for these,” Bilbo explained as a way of hello, extending her hand for her to see. Thorin was hit with a nauseous twinge, but as Bilbo opened her fist, it was simply to show her a collection of dark feathers. “To make quills, you see. The ones I found were badly burned, and anyway, Ori said that he could teach me how to make my own.”

For one terrifying moment, Thorin’s mind had been caught in a moment of remembrance, as she recalled the similarities between her latest nightmare and this moment; Bilbo presenting her with Thorin’s own heart, turned heavy as stone by all her sins. But of course there was no heart, as there was no blame in Bilbo’s eyes.

 “And may I ask what you’re planning on writing?” she asked, fighting to reclaim her voice.

“Well, in light of your recent blunders, I started to wonder how I could remind everyone of your supposed greatness.” Until now, Bilbo’s voice had been coated with heavy irony - but as she continued, it was with utmost sincerity. “So I figured I should write a book.”

Thorin had not expected that. For all the shared secrets between them, not once had Bilbo made any mention about literal ambitions. “A book?” she asked in amazement.

Bilbo shrugged, perhaps a tad too nonchalantly – Thorin noticed - to truly mask her insecurity over the matter. “Why not? May I remind you, that while you thought you were on your deathbed, you told me that only I was permitted to pen epics about you.”

She spoke the words in the same manner of heartfelt teasing as before, but as she did, Thorin could feel some sort of grand shift taking place, like an invisible veil being pulled aside - as if after days of avoidance, they were suddenly ready to joke about the things that had caused the rift between them in the first place. It would have been easy to assume that they were not there yet, and that what now laid in waiting was a number of lengthy conversations and apologies in measure. But it was as if Bilbo had decided to circle her way around that wasteland of potential ruin, in the hopes that they could start afresh.

 “And this book of yours,” Thorin inquired, “how does it end?” _How do we_ , she would have liked to know, but didn’t yet dare to ask.

Bilbo reached to scratch her ear in endearing fashion – another nervous tick, yet her voice still betrayed none of it. “Well, I was thinking along the lines of ‘and they lived happily till the end of their days’ or ‘all was well’. Because why not, really?”

“A happy ending.” Thorin couldn’t help but notice how her own voice hadn’t come out as hopeful as she had intended. She understood that Bilbo only meant well, knew that if anything, she should feel flattered, but it was a hollow sort of gratitude. And by the looks of it, Bilbo had recognized it too, because now she was gazing at her with a worrying frown between her brows, her own good mood deflated.

Thorin clenched her hands into fists, feeling her nails – now uncharacteristically long – dig into the flesh of her palms, the feeling just this side of painful. She took a breath, then another, and tried to think what Dís would have done, were their positions changed. _Take courage_ , her voice whispered in her ear.

“I want to explain –“ she started, in the exact moment as Bilbo said, “Thorin, you don’t think –“

Their words clashed and got mixed up in each other. It rendered them silent once more, until Bilbo was the one to break it; she huffed, shaking her head, and composed her features in a pleading sort of embarrassment. “I think this would be easier if we were still at Beorn’s, speaking of doilies and whatnot,” she admitted.

Perhaps she felt that she was grasping at straws here, but inside her chest, Thorin felt her heart jump at the sight of the offered solution.  Indicating the hilltop around them, she said, “It wouldn’t be the first time I trusted this place with my secrets.”

Bilbo’s head perked, clearly relieved that she had caught her meaning with so little prompting. “Well alright – if what you say is true and you have already shared some here – then I go first.” Taking a deep breath, she said, “I feel like I should tell you that don’t see you as symbol.”

“Is that your secret?”

“Yes!” Until then Bilbo’s feet had done a nervous sort of dance in the snow, but now they stilled in their shuffling and became firmly planted in place. Thorin watched her drew in air like a bellows, readying to puff out a stream of rightful fury. “I feel like we got this whole thing backwards; I’m not here because it’s a choice between that and getting married, and I’m definitely not here because I signed a contract or swore an oath! I did both of those things because you gave me the courage to be the person I wanted to become, who I _like_ that I’ve become, and… Well, if I also quite happen to like the person you are, then I don’t think those two things have to be unexclusive.”

“You give me courage as well,” Thorin admitted, in a small voice that she didn’t quite recognize as her own.

“Oh, like that’s supposed to be your _big_ secret?”

“It is,” she insisted urgently. “You reminded me of many things I had overlooked: family and friendship, and the meaning of mercy – all things that were nearly lost to me while I fought to achieve less valuable pursuits. If someone like you can see that I still have the potential for good in me, then I have no choice but to believe it true.”

Bilbo’s face filled with delight, as the weight of her words made itself know. But just as quickly, like paint peeling away from wood in strips, her joy disappeared once more. Thorin watched as her right hand tugged nervously at labels of her topmost coat, before disappearing into her pocket. “I’m not some sort of a barometer, Thorin. I don’t think I have it in me to be your conscience,” she mumbled. Before she managed to reply, Bilbo added, suddenly almost begging, “Please don’t ask me to.”

“I won’t,” Thorin hurried to promise, even if it seemed rather pointless; Bilbo was, now doubt, the kindest and most rightful person she had ever had the good fortune to meet. She also suspected that a large part of Bilbo’s humbleness flowed from the fact that she could never see herself worthy of such praises, even if the old ones themselves would ascend down to this plane to tell her as much. Thorin knew she would be forever in awe of her, the same way she knew now that she was a much better subject of her admiration than any stone.

Still, in the face of her promise Bilbo seemed to relax, her hands coming out of hiding so she could hug her arms to keep warm. Before her courage could fail her, Thorin hurried to say, “But there’s one other thing I would like to ask…” When Bilbo looked at her expectantly, she requested, “May I kiss you?”

Bilbo blinked a number of times, clearly taken aback. Then something in the set of her shoulders eased and the movement was repeated when her tight smile made way for genuine happiness. “After everything, do you really think now’s the time to start asking for permission?”

Thorin’s hand cupped her chin in order tip it up. “From you? Always.”

So she did as he had asked, in a place that had been a safe haven in the storms of her childhood, and what she now thought in terms of it being a crossroads of sorts of their respective homes; a stubborn tree that had stood boldly against Smaug’s reign, maybe in hibernation for the time being, but not easily conquered.

When they pulled apart, Bilbo leaned her forehead against her chin. “What are you thinking?” Thorin asked, her voice a quiet hum. She was holding her close by the elbows and could feel her own hands shaking just slightly. It made her think how she didn’t quite yet know the secret of a tender touch, but was determined to rediscover it.

“I’m thinking that if I’m not careful in the future, I might be in danger of getting a beard-burn from a woman,” Bilbo quipped; against her chest, Thorin could feel her body shaking with quiet laughter. “Or maybe I was just wondering why we didn’t do this sooner.”

“I think there was the matter concerning a certain dragon.”

“You wanted to kiss a dragon?” Thorin pulled back, annoyed, and Bilbo looked at her sheepishly. “No, sorry, that was uncalled for.”

“I wanted to, though. Kiss you before,” Thorin explained. She felt brave enough to admit it now. “At Beorn’s. Nearly confessed to it then, too.”

She watched as Bilbo’s eyes went wide, and then soft in turn. Then she wrinkled her nose, as if something had only now occurred to her. “Oh, let me guess: Erebor’s Queens don’t even have shield-maidens, do they?”

Thorin could feel her lips pulling into a wolfish smirk, the one she knew she shared with her nieces, but hadn’t worn in ages. It seemed like the cat was finally out of the bag, if not as swiftly as Dwalin had once predicted. “We do not.”

Bilbo rolled her eyes, leaning against her once more with a fond sort of reassignment. “Figures.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> First written just before the third movie came out and then promptly discarded in a fit of self-consciousness, I decided now was the time to bring this back. What was first intended as a short character study spiraled wildly out of control when it became apparent that I felt compelled to re-write the whole damn journey and then some. Once again it bears mentioning that English isn’t my first language – comments and feedback are always welcome and greatly treasured.


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